CY TWOMBLY:THE DEATH of American painter Cy Twombly, at the age of 83, has ended one of the most distinguished artistic careers of the past half-century.
Like a latter-day Ingres, he was an expatriate who lived in Italy, fascinated by the country’s cultural heritage. Twombly’s response to this stimulus was, however, anything but academic, as he expressed himself with a radical language of highly coloured stains and energetic brushwork. His success resulted from the combination of this exciting style with a subtle, original intellect, great self-belief and a measure of charm and good fortune.
Edwin Parker Twombly jnr was born in Lexington, Virginia. His father was a sports instructor and former baseball player known as “Cy” after the legendary pitcher “Cyclone” Young. Twombly inherited his father’s nickname, but not his athleticism.
After completing his initial training in Boston, in 1950 Twombly jnr joined the Art Students League in New York, the epicentre of abstract expressionism. Soon afterwards this influence followed Twombly to Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where his teachers included Robert Motherwell, although he was also inspired by the rector Charles Olson’s interest in archetypal, symbolic imagery.
Twombly’s yearning for antiquity led to the transatlantic trip that he made in 1952 with a scholarship from the Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia. With Robert Rauschenberg, whom he had met at the Art Students League, he travelled to Rome, the city in which he was to settle five years later, and, more surprisingly, Morocco.
Although the journey to North Africa was Rauschenberg’s idea, it profoundly affected Twombly: he brought back a sketchbook filled with motifs and studies of materials, and subsequently produced expressive abstract canvases whose titles were taken from Moroccan towns.
Most remarkably, in reaction against the taboos about left and right that he encountered on his travels, Twombly began to draw “as if with his left hand”. By denying himself dexterity, he reduced his control of the creative process in a way that was analogous to surrealist techniques. He took this further during his military service as a cryptographer from 1953 to 1954 by working at night, in the dark.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the joint exhibition he held with Rauschenberg at New York's Stable Gallery in 1953 had some stormy reviews, with the Herald Tribunedeclaring it was one of the two worst shows of the season.
Twombly moved to Rome in 1957. There he met Tatiana Franchetti, an Italian aristocrat, whom he married in 1959 before buying a palazzo on the Via di Monserrato in Rome.
During the late 1950s he also spent time by the sea, on the island of Procida and in Sperlonga, north of Naples, where he produced memorable images on canvas and paper.
During these years in Italy, Twombly's output sometimes reflected developments in the rest of the world: for example, as minimalist artists were creating a stir in the US and Europe, in the late 1960s Twombly executed six monochrome canvases, the Treatise on the Veil, which are blank apart from measurements written in crayon over the grey paint.
The austerity continued into the early 1970s. From the middle of the decade, however, a new variety and richness appeared. Twombly returned to sculpture, which he had abandoned in the late 1950s, producing objects redolent of classical architecture or ancient rites, while in his paintings he introduced luminous, watery tones.
This tendency culminated in a spectacular sequence at the Venice Biennale in 1988. Inspired by the city’s lagoon and canals, Twombly splashed acrylic on to canvases shaped like baroque ceiling paintings.
Most brilliant of all were two series from the 1990s, which evoked the four seasons and the stages of human life with sensuous colours and enigmatic writing.
The Dionysian impulse remained a potent force in Twombly’s work even as he was approaching 80. In contrast, his recently installed ceiling at the Salle des Bronzes in the Louvre offers a more serene vision of the classical tradition. Although Twombly continued to live in Italy, he somehow remained very American. He often returned to Lexington, where he was still known to some as Cy jnr.
Twombly forged a distinctive brand from references to the high culture of the past, only rarely referring to contemporary events or issues. Yet, despite this apparent remoteness from the present, he achieved early success by offering a clever alternative to abstract expressionism and managed to keep going long enough to come back into fashion.
Tatiana died in 2010. Their son, Cyrus, two grandchildren, and Twombly’s partner, Nicola Del Roscio, survive him.
Cy Twombly (Edwin Parker Twombly jnr): born April 25th, 1928; died July 5th, 2011