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Inimitable Cy - The Open College of the Arts

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Inimitable Cy

Although Cy was delightfully good company and amusing, you were always aware you were in the presence of greatness.” So says Tate Curator Nicholas Cullinan in the wake of Twombly’s death. ‘There really wasn’t anyone else quite like Cy Twombly, either in art or life. His paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs are like the man: inimitable and irreplaceable. He was a true original.’ Cullinan curated the current exhibition of his work on at the Dulwich Picture Gallery which runs into September. Entitled Twombly and Poussin: Arcadian Painters. Previously the Tate ran Twombly show (in 2008) which explored how Twombly was influenced by antiquity, myth and the Mediterranean. In particular the the violent red swirls in the Bacchus 2005 paintings like the drunken god of wine.
Cy Twombly was painting until the day he died on 5 July, aged 83. He was always his own man, producing extraordinary paintings right through his life, ending with a triumphal series of paintings towards the very end of it. He is lauded across the world for his contribution to the international art world, and in particular the American art scene, for re-envigorating and transforming it.
Cy (named after American baseball player Cy Young) was known for his calligraphic style of mark making. He was born in 1928 in Lexington, Virginia, Precocious, his talent was discovered when he copied a Picasso on the cover of a magazine when he was 12. He attended art classes in Lexington and then studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Art Students League, New York and Black Mountain College, North Carolina. Launched into the art world in the 1950’s, when Abstract Expressionism was at its height, he travelled with the artist Robert Rauschenberg in Europe and North Africa. By the mid 1950s, Twombly was a prominent figure among young artists working in the wake of Abstract Expressionism alongside Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.
After he moved to Italy in 1957 references to antiquity, ancient history, classical mythology, Renaissance painting and poetry became increasingly prominent in his paintings. His palette grew more vivid and his mark making more direct (he used his hands) and passionate. The reception to this work, in the world of Pop Art and Minimalism, was quite hostile, and it was not until his later years that this work was embraced.

In the mid sixties his paintings began to change. He started to add words and verse into his paintings with graffiti-like scribbles. These were the hallmark of his work, as were scratches, over-painting, drippings and rubbings-out. Out of these grew his first ‘grey’ paintings or ‘blackboard’ still images, of white calligraphic marks of wax crayon on a dark surface. He experimented with sculpture but the characteristic Twombly twiddles and scratches were present in all his work, spanning the whole of his rich and profoundly influential career. Since 2000, his work evolved considerably and is now receiving great acclaim, and in 2001 was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale.
To see the BBC report on his death plus further web links, click here.


Posted by author: Jane Parry

4 thoughts on “Inimitable Cy

  • “… painting until the day he died… aged 83”. What an inspiration and encouragement.
    Thanks for this interesting post, Jane, and the images you’ve chosen to include.

  • paintings by Cy Twombly (alongside Anselm Kiefer, Patrick Heron and others) really need to be seen ‘in the flesh’ to appreciate their material and visual impact. T

    • (sorry for the glitch …) their scale – in relation to the viewer and the architecture – cannot be appreciated when viewing reproductions in catalogues. In Twombly’s case, the reproductions look like fast scribbles and doodles whereas the paintings themselves are multi-layered with faint traces of images, texts and fragmented meanings, and are(dare I say it) very very beautiful

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