Cy Twombly

Edwin Parker Twombly Jr. (April 25, 1928 – July 5, 2011) better known by a popular pseudonym of Cy Twombly, was an American artist and a significant representative of the Post-Abstract Expressionist generation. His brilliant large-scale paintings of gestural marks were scratched and smeared on raw canvas or linen, imbuing his pieces with a unique level of frenetic spirit and vitality that remains unmatched to this day. Besides combining numerous styles with his own concepts, Cy Twombly found massive influence in the sense of history and autonomy present in his beloved South, blending it with his interest in Greco-Roman mythology and heritage. The most efficient description of Cy’s portfolio was provided by no other than the artist himself: My line is childlike but not childish.

Twombly is said to have influenced younger artists such as Anselm Kiefer, Francesco Clemente, and Julian Schnabel. His best-known works are typically large-scale, freely-scribbled, calligraphic and graffiti-like works on solid fields of mostly gray, tan, or off-white colors. His later paintings and works on paper shifted toward "romantic symbolism", and their titles can be interpreted visually through shapes and forms and words. Twombly often quoted poets such as Stéphane Mallarmé, Rainer Maria Rilke and John Keats, as well as classical myths and allegories, in his works. Examples of this are his Apollo and The Artist and a series of eight drawings consisting solely of inscriptions of the word "VIRGIL".

Cy Twombly has had retrospectives at the Milwaukee Art Center (who mounted his first in 1968), the Kunsthaus Zürich, the Museum of Modern Art, the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, the Tate Modern, the Guggenheim Bilbao, and the Museum of Modern Art in Rome. He has had recent exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna. In 1995, the Cy Twombly Gallery opened at The Menil Collection in Houston, exhibiting works made by the artist since 1954. In 2010, Twombly's permanent site-specific painting, Ceiling was unveiled in the Salle des Bronzes at the Musée du Louvre. At the same time he was made Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur by the French government.

Works by Cy Twombly are found in major private and public collections, including Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Modern, Paris, France; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Dia: Beacon, Beacon, NY; Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, Germany; Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Musée du Louvre, Paris, France; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; and Tate Modern, London, England.

In a 1994 retrospective, curator Kirk Varnedoe described Twombly's work as "influential among artists, discomfiting to many critics and truculently difficult not just for a broad public, but for sophisticated initiates of postwar art as well."