BULLETIN: Artist Cy Twombly dies in Rome
Cy (Twombly) + Relics – Rome #5, a 1952 gelatin silver print by Robert Rauschenberg. Auctioned by Phillips de Pury & Co. on Nov. 14, 2009. Image courtesy of LiveAuctioneers.com archive and Phillips de Pury.
ROME (AFP) – American artist Cy Twombly has died in a hospital in Rome, at age 83, the director of the Lambert collection in Marseille, France told the news service AFP.
The artist, who was living in Italy and had suffered with cancer for several years, was hospitalized a few days ago, according to Eric Mezil.
An exposition of his photographs opened last month at the Lambert collection in Avignon.
Born Edwin Parker (Cy) Twombly Jr. on April 25, 1928), the artist was well known for his large-scale, freely scribbled, calligraphic-style graffiti paintings on solid fields of mostly gray, tan, or off-white colors. Twombly paintings blur the line between drawing and painting. Many of his best-known paintings of the late 1960s are reminiscent of a school blackboard on which someone has practiced cursive ‘e’ s. His paintings of the late 1950s and early 1960s might be reminiscent of long-term accumulation of bathroom graffiti. Twombly had at this point discarded painting figurative, representational subject-matter, citing the line or smudge — each mark with its own history — as its proper subject.
Later, many of his paintings and works on paper moved into “romantic symbolism”, and their titles can be interpreted visually through shapes and forms and words. Twombly often quoted the poet Stéphane Mallarmé, as well as many 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”.
A friend of fellow U.S. artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, Twombly was born in Lexington, Virginia. In the 1950s, he moved to Italy. According to Eric Mezil, it was Twombly’s wish to be buried in Rome, “the city he has cherished for 50 years.”
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ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Cy (Twombly) + Relics – Rome #5, a 1952 gelatin silver print by Robert Rauschenberg. Auctioned by Phillips de Pury & Co. on Nov. 14, 2009. Image courtesy of LiveAuctioneers.com archive and Phillips de Pury.
