CY TWOMBLY Lexington, 1928 – Roma, 2011
Cy Twombly was born on April 25, 1928, in Lexington, Virginia. In 1947, he attended the Museum of Fine Arts school in Boston, and from 1949 to 1950, he studied at Washington and Lee University in Lexington. In 1950, Twombly moved to New York, where he continued his studies at the Art Students League and became acquainted with other artists, including Robert Rauschenberg. A year later, Twombly changed universities and enrolled at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he studied under Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline. In 1952, he embarked on a trip to South America, North Africa, Spain, and Italy with Rauschenberg. In the early 1950s, influenced by Kline but especially by Paul Klee, Cy Twombly predominantly used gestural-expressionist brushstrokes in his works, creating a delicate interplay of lines, words, numbers, and fragments of objects. From 1955 to 1956, he taught at Southern Seminary and Junior College in Buena Vista, Virginia. In 1957, Twombly returned to Rome, where he settled permanently in 1960. That same year, he held his first exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery. In the 1960s, Cy Twombly painted the "Blackboard Paintings," in which writing is exposed and transformed into a physical gesture. In the mid-1970s, Twombly created "multilayered" works, constructing expressive structures through collages of papers and various painting tools. The graphic elements dissolve more intensely from one image to another, merging into elegant flower paintings reminiscent of Fauvism in the 1990s. In addition to painting, since 1955 the artist has also created sculptural works, often painted white, using found objects and simple materials. The first retrospective of his works was held in Bern in 1973, followed by important exhibitions at the Whitney Museum in New York in 1979, the Kunsthalle in Zurich in 1987, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1994. Twombly's artistic merit was recognized with numerous awards. The Cy Twombly Gallery was inaugurated in 1995, Houston, designed and realized by the artist and architect Renzo Piano. Twombly was represented at the 2001 Venice Biennale with the cycle of paintings "Lepanto." - Art Directory Official
