Cy Twombly - 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale London Thursday, June 29, 2017 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Rubin Gorewitz, West Nyack
    James Goodman Gallery, New York
    Galerie 1990 - 2000, Paris
    Acquired from the above by the present owner

  • Exhibited

    Lugano, TAG Lugano, Arte Internazionale del XX secolo, 6 April – 2 July 2016, p.73

  • Literature

    Yvon Lambert and Philippe Sollers, Cy Twombly: Catalogue Raisonné des Oeuvres sur Papier. 1977-1982. Volume VII, Milan, 1991, no. 121, p. 119

  • Artist Biography

    Cy Twombly

    American • 1928 - 2011

    Cy Twombly emerged in the mid-1950s alongside New York artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. While at first developing a graffiti-like style influenced by Abstract Expressionist automatism–having notably studied under Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell at the legendary Black Mountain College between 1951 and 1952–Twombly was a prominent figure in the new generation of artists that challenged the abstract orthodoxy of the New York School. Twombly developed a highly unique pictorial language that found its purest expression upon his life-defining move to Rome in 1957. Simultaneously invoking classical history, poetry, mythology and his own contemporary lived experience, Twombly's visual idiom is distinguished by a remarkable vocabulary of signs and marks and the fusion of word and text. 

    Cy Twombly produced graffiti-like paintings that were inspired by the work of Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Robert Motherwell. His gestural forms of lines, drips and splattering were at first not well-received, but the artist later became known as the leader of the estrangement from the Abstract Expressionism movement. Full of energy and rawness, Twombly's pieces are reminiscent of childhood sketches and reveal his inspiration from mythology and poetry.

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195

Untitled

signed and dated 'Cy Twombly Mar. 25 1981'
chalk pastel, crayon and collage on paper
69 x 49 cm (27 1/8 x 19 1/4 in.)
Executed in 1981.

Estimate
£80,000 - 120,000 

Contact Specialist
Tamila Kerimova
Specialist, Head of Day Sale
+ 44 20 7318 4065
tkerimova@phillips.com

20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale

London Auction 30 June 2017