Cy Twombly - Contemporary Art Day Sale New York Friday, May 15, 2015 | Phillips
  • Provenance

    The artist
    Heiner Bastian, Berlin
    Marx Collection, Berlin
    Private Collection

  • Exhibited

    Berlin, Sammlung Marx, Beuys, Rauschenberg, Twombly, Warhol – Sammlung Marx, March 2 – April 12, 1982, then traveled to Mönchengladbach, Städtisches Museum Abteiberg (May 6 – September 30, 1982)

  • Literature

    H. Bastian (ed.), Beuys, Rauschenberg, Twombly, Warhol - Sammlung Marx. Berlin: Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, and Prestel Verlag, 1982, cat. no. 96, ill. in color
    Y. Lambert (ed.), Cy Twombly: Catalogue raisonne des Oeuvres sur papier, volume VII: 1977 - 1982, Milan: Multhipla, 1991, cat. no. 69, p. 72 (illustrated)

  • 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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191

Dionysus

1979
collage, tempera, crayon, and graphite on paper, on two sheets
39 x 29 1/2 in. (99 x 75 cm)
Initialed, annotated and dated “MAENADS CT.79” at upper right; further initialed, annotated and dated “MAENADS CT.79” on the reverse; further titled “DIONYSUS” at the center of the composition.

Estimate
$150,000 - 200,000 

Contact Specialist
Kate Bryan
Head of Day Sale
New York
+ 1 212 940 1267

Contemporary Art Day Sale

New York Day Sale 15 May 2015 11am