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Delivering the impressive impact of Cy Twombly’s unique pictorial language, Untitled is a vivid example of the “whorl” works that the artist created in 1964. A flurry of scribbles, scratches and loops coalesce into an abstract composition that is simultaneously delicate and dynamic—punctuated by subtle bursts of red and blue color, and anchored by four dominant monument-like rectangular structures. Created during a spurt of creativity between July and August 1964, Untitled belongs to a suite of nineteen drawings called Notes from a Tower that Twombly embarked on at Castel Gardena, a Renaissance castle in the Italian Alps where he regularly summered. Charged with frenetic energy, other examples from this series reside in prominent collections, such as that of Jasper Johns, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, the latter previously belonging to fellow artist Roy Lichtenstein. Executed at a pivotal point in the artist’s career, Untitled suspends the viewer in a moment of spirited sublimity.
Julie Mehretu, Untitled, 2004. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Image: Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY, Artwork: © 2021 Julie Mehretu"When I work, I work very fast, but preparing to work can take any length of time."
—Cy TwomblyCreated seven years after the artist’s career-defining move to Rome in 1957, the present work epitomizes the revolutionary visual idiom that Twombly developed in response to the mythical past of his surroundings and his immediate experiences in Italy. In 1957, he expressed, “Each line is now the actual experience with its own innate history. It does not illustrate — it is the sensation of its own realization.”i While his American counterparts were finding inspiration in Pop culture or Minimalism, Twombly, ever the contrarian, was developing a series of groundbreaking works inspired by the epic and dramatic panoramas and classical landscapes of the High Renaissance and Baroque.
Wassily Kandinsky, Untitled, 1940. Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Image: Digital Image © CNAC/MNAM, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY, Artwork: © 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, ParisUntitled is emblematic of the seminal body of work that Twombly created in the 1960s, widely considered as a critical and extremely fertile period in his long and illustrious career. As Simon Schama has observed, “Twombly’s creative energy erupts, turning out an extended series of untitled compositions in which pictograms and ideograms…swim and seethe in a broth of jittery action.”ii While Twombly’s 1961-1963 series of works frequently referenced specific classical tales as a point of departure, the present work demonstrates how, starting in 1964, Twombly’s work is characterized by that which Roland Barthes termed a “Mediterranean effect”: a topology of references constituting, “an enormous complex of memories and sensations…a historical, mythological, poetic culture, this whole life of forms, colors and light which occurs at the frontier of the terrestrial landscape and the plains of the sea.”iii
Cy Twombly in Rome, Italy. Horst P. Horst for Vogue, 1966, Image and Artwork:
Horst P Horst/Condé Nast/ShutterstockThe drawings Twombly created in the summer of 1964 at the Castel Gardena represent a crucial stage in the formal evolution of Twombly’s oeuvre in that period. Twombly began work on this series shortly after completing the triptych Ilium titled One Morning Ten Years Later, 1964, in Rome; Part I of this work resides in The Broad Museum, Los Angeles. While drawing upon the events leading up to the Trojan War, as detailed in Homer’s epic The Iliad, Twombly creates an ambivalent scene, evocative of a frenzied battle, but also a “deliberately eroticized apotheosis of life and death.”iv Through his experimentations in his Notes from a Tower series, Twombly further developed these iconographic themes, in anticipation of his solo exhibition The Artist in the Northern Climate at the Galerie Friedrich + Dahlen, Munich, in the autumn of 1964 where he exhibited a selection of the Castel Gardena drawings alongside ten paintings created for the exhibition. While resuming the visual dialogue with the Notes from a Tower works, these paintings introduced an unprecedented level of formal reduction that was characterized by an emphasis on the dominant rectangular structures. Situated at this critical juncture, Untitled articulates an important evolution in Twombly’s practice, which culminated in the artist’s celebrated mid–1960s monochromatic, grey paintings.
i Cy Twombly, quoted in “Signs,” L’Esperienza moderna, no. 2, August/September 1957, pp. 32–33.
ii Simon Schama, Cy Twombly Fifty Years of Works on Paper, exh. cat., State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, 2003, p. 14.
iii Roland Barthes, quoted in “The Wisdom of Art,” in Nicola Del Roscio, ed., Writings on Cy Twombly, Munich, 2002, p. 19.
iv Heiner Bastian, ed., Cy Twombly Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Volume II, 1961-1965, Munich, 1993, p. 30.Provenance
Ugo Ferranti, Rome
Locksley Shea Gallery, Minneapolis
Estate of John M. and Marion A. Shea, Palm Springs
Christie’s, New York, November 19, 1997, lot 328
Private Collection, Belgium
Van de Weghe Fine Art, New York
Private Collection, Japan (acquired from the above)
Phillips, London, March 8, 2018, lot 12
Acquired at the above sale by the present ownerExhibited
Newport Beach, Harbor Art Museum; Madison, Elvehjem Museum of Art; Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, Cy Twombly. Works on Paper 1954 – 1976, October 2, 1981 – October 17, 1982, no. 14, p. 37 (illustrated)
Literature
Nicola del Roscio, Cy Twombly: Catalogue Raisonne of Drawings, 1964-1969, vol. IV, New York, 2014, no. 51, p. 57 (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.
Ο◆46
Untitled
signed and dated "Cy Twombly 1964" lower edge; signed, inscribed and dated "Cy Twombly Val Gardena aug 1964" on the reverse
pencil, colored pencil and ballpoint pen on paper
27 1/2 x 39 in. (69.9 x 99.1 cm)
Executed in 1964.
Estimate
$600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $786,250
Amanda Lo Iacono
New York Head of Department & Head of Auctions
+1 212 940 1278
aloiacono@phillips.com
20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale
New York Auction 17 November 2021
1
Shara Hughes
Inside Outside
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $1,482,000
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2
Jadé Fadojutimi
My Umbrella Has A Nourishing Disguise
Estimate $150,000 - 200,000
Sold for $877,000
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3
Ewa Juszkiewicz
Girl in Blue
Estimate $80,000 - 120,000
Sold for $730,800
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4
Kwesi Botchway
Green Sofa
Estimate $30,000 - 50,000
Sold for $214,200
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5
Titus Kaphar
Fade With Time
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $816,500
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6
David Hammons
Puzzling Times
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $877,000
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7
Raymond Pettibon
No Title (Let him come...)
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $3,418,000
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8
Joan Mitchell
Untitled
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $11,870,000
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9
Georgia O'Keeffe
Crab’s Claw Ginger Hawaii
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $7,748,000
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10
Alexander Calder
White Moon
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $4,628,000
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11
Cecily Brown
Untitled
Estimate $3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Sold for $6,140,500
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12
Willem de Kooning
Composition
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
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13
Rudolf Stingel
Untitled
Estimate $1,800,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $2,692,000
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14
This lot is no longer available.
15
Amy Sherald
Welfare Queen
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for $3,902,000
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16
Francis Bacon
'Pope with Owls'
Estimate $35,000,000 - 45,000,000
Sold for $33,000,000
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17
Luc Tuymans
Wallpaper
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $1,250,000
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18
Pierre Bonnard
Panier de fruit
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for $4,991,000
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19
Honor Titus
Linden Blvd Jazz Radio
Estimate $30,000 - 50,000
Sold for $163,800
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20
Matthew Wong
Time After Time
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,482,000
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21
Avery Singer
European Ego Ideal
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $4,023,000
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22
Mark Tansey
Garden
Estimate $700,000 - 1,000,000
Sold for $2,934,000
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23
KAWS
THE WAY HE KNOWS
Estimate $850,000 - 1,000,000
Sold for $1,542,500
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24
Wassily Kandinsky
Fliessend
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
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25
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled (from Famous Negro Athlete Series)
Estimate $750,000 - 1,100,000
Sold for $2,450,000
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26
Peter Saul
Ice Box #3
Estimate $350,000 - 450,000
Sold for $441,000
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27
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled (The Door)
Estimate $6,000,000 - 8,000,000
Sold for $8,549,500
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28
Emily Mae Smith
Feast and Famine
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
Sold for $1,361,000
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29
Gerhard Richter
Weiß (White)
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $5,717,000
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30
Robert Ryman
Series #25 (White)
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,421,500
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31
Frank Stella
Double Concentric Square
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $1,845,000
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32
Carmen Herrera
Amarillo y Negro
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $630,000
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33
Andy Warhol
The Last Supper/Be a Somebody with a Body
Estimate $6,000,000 - 8,000,000
Sold for $6,806,000
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34
Christopher Wool
Blue Fool
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,179,500
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35
This lot is no longer available.
36
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Six PM, Malaga
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $567,000
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37
Mickalene Thomas
Portrait of Qusuquzah #5
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $504,000
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38
Mike Kelley
Memory Ware Flat #3
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,179,500
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39
George Condo
Collision Course
Estimate $1,800,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $2,450,000
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40
Bruce Nauman
Untitled (from Fifteen Pairs of Hands)
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $983,000
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41
David Hammons
Untitled
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $3,660,000
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42
Nicolas Party
Houses
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $1,724,000
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43
Hurvin Anderson
Country Club—Mixed Doubles
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $604,800
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44
Max Ernst
Ohne Titel (les hommes ne le sauront jamais)
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $504,000
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45
Max Ernst
Kachina, le chien de Peggy Guggenheim
Estimate $280,000 - 350,000
Sold for $277,200
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46
Cy Twombly
Untitled
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $786,250
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47
Reggie Burrows Hodges
On the Verge: Green
Estimate $100,000 - 150,000
Sold for $567,000
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48
Max Ernst
Portrait de Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
Sold for $176,400
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