Cy Twombly - 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale London Wednesday, October 4, 2017 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Sergio Tosi, Milan
    Collection particulière, Milan
    Collection Jean Albou, Paris
    Artcurial, 7 December 2010, lot 237
    Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

  • Literature

    The attached piece has been filed in the archive of the artist as a proof for the cover of the folder containing the 16 screenprints, 8 Odi di Orazio, 1968.

  • 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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122

8 Odi di Orazio

signed and titled 'Cy Twombly 8 Odi di Orazio'
pencil on paper
50 x 35 cm (19 5/8 x 13 3/4 in.)
Executed in 1968.

Estimate
£40,000 - 60,000 

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

20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale

London Auction 5 October 2017