“Ancient representations of forms of harmonious contrasts became a central idea, conveying the simple antithesis of life and death in which the immortal becomes mortal and the mortal immortal.”

—Heiner Bastian

Cy Twombly’s Crimes of Passion I, 1960 brims with the fabled and the forbidden, evoking a tempestuous dialogue between classical antiquity and modern abstraction. This masterwork emerges from the fertile ground of Twombly’s relocation to Rome in 1957, where he would remain and become inextricably intertwined with the visual language, classical allure, and mythologically evocative landscape of the Eternal City. An arresting convergence of libidinal energy and semiotic chaos, Crimes of Passion I channels the elemental force of Eros through fragmented forms, script-like markings, and tremulous lines, rendering an aesthetic that is at once urgent and restrained. Such a painting, with its distinguished provenance—having passed through the collections of notable figures such as British rock icon Eric Clapton, German collector Erich Marx, and influential dealer Heiner Friedrich—exemplifies Twombly's singular engagement with classical themes through a distinctly modern lens. It stands as a work of remarkable vitality, echoed by its companion, Crimes of Passion II, which resides in the permanent collection of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne.

The present work belongs to Twombly’s series of "Baroque Paintings," works suffused with an ancient splendor and grandiloquence that would define his practice in the early 1960s. Here, the driving mythological force of the composition is inseparable from its fractured eroticism, a meditation on the body, fragmented and symbol-laden, that both invites and resists interpretation. To encounter this painting is to enter a field of mythic resonance where Twombly reconstitutes the classical through his own, deeply personal codex.

“By the early 1960s… the languor and lightness of Twombly’s first works following his move to Italy subsided, and began to be increasingly replaced by a newfound emphasis on anxiety, violence and an ever-more baroque aesthetic of painting…”

 —Nicholas Cullinan

The central theme of Eros permeates Crimes of Passion I, evoking not merely the deity of love but the broader spectrum of desire, violence, and the fragility of corporeal form. Twombly’s gestural markings conjure fragmented representations of breasts, phallic symbols, and other libidinal shapes that interact across the canvas, creating a chaotic yet intentional landscape of sensuous vitality.ⁱ The eroticism in Crimes of Passion I is visceral, suggesting an almost primal energy that nods to the mythological loves and tragedies of antiquity. Nicholas Cullinan notes that, during this period, Twombly’s earlier stylistic “lightness” gave way to a newfound anxiety and heightened sensuality. This shift mirrors the narratives of passion and tragedy in classical mythology—tales that Twombly reinterprets through abstract forms and bodily allusions. His markings do not merely suggest physical desire but express the psychological depth of Eros as a force that simultaneously creates and destroys, a tension mirrored in the chaotic interplay of form and color on the canvas.
 

Twombly’s relocation to Rome was instrumental in shaping his approach to classical themes. Moving in 1960 to a 17th-century palazzo on Via di Monserrato, he was constantly immersed in the remnants of ancient civilization and the timeless, almost mythological aura of the city. In Crimes of Passion I, this influence is evident not just in the subject matter but in the very manner of his mark-making, which resonates with the fragmented and eroded statues of antiquity. The city’s classical heritage provided both the inspiration and the raw material for Twombly’s visual lexicon, enabling him to capture the essence of ancient myth while abstracting it to a deeply personal and contemporary language.

“What happens on the stage Twombly offers us… is something which partakes of several kinds of event.”

—Roland Barthes

The present work encapsulates Twombly's intense response to his environment—a Rome that was at once archaic and vibrant, imbued with stories of gods and mortals. His use of trembling lines, disjointed forms, and numbers suggests both the narrative of ancient texts and the visual decay of ancient ruins, connecting the viewer to a historical continuum that is both linear and cyclical. In Crimes of Passion I, the city becomes more than a backdrop; it is a co-conspirator in Twombly’s exploration of myth and memory.

A hallmark of Twombly’s mid-career works, fragmentation emerges as a visual and thematic device in Crimes of Passion I, reflecting a dismantling of the classical ideal of wholeness and harmony. The composition’s scattered forms—gendered body parts, floral shapes, and frenetic lines—capture an aesthetic that is both corporeal and abstract. Twombly’s approach to fragmentation disrupts any illusion of physical unity, presenting the body in dismembered parts that are marked by vulnerability and sensuality. Art historian Heiner Bastian interprets this visual fragmentation as symbolic of human nature’s dual impulses—creative and destructive, sexual and violent.ⁱⁱ Bastian suggests that Twombly's markings convey the rawness of human passion, with the use of red crayon intensifying a physicality that evokes the flesh and blood of ancient heroes. This technique situates Crimes of Passion I within the psychological realm, where body parts stand as metaphors for the shattered ideals and complex relationships between desire and destruction.

 “I like the idea of scratching and biting into the canvas. Certain things appeal to me more. Also prehistoric things, they do that scratching.”

 —Cy Twombly

Crimes of Passion I encapsulates Twombly’s fusion of system-based forms—numbers, grids, and orderly structures—with irregular, nature-inspired pictograms and intuitive references to corporeal processes, both sexual and otherwise. This juxtaposition highlights a duality between mind and body, intellect and instinct, which he explores on an exuberant scale. Twombly’s response to the monumental spaces of Rome emerges in the painting’s compositional economy and grand dimensions, embracing the city’s layered grandeur and decadence across its ancient, Baroque, and modern histories. Twombly’s punctuated use of color and gestural line here is inseparable from his exploration of semiotics, a technique Barthes linked to a multi-layered “stage” of events within Twombly’s works.ⁱⁱⁱ His seemingly chaotic marks—often smeared, fragmented, and overlaid—suggest an instinctive graphic intelligence that is both systematic and spontaneous. Barthes argued that Twombly’s marks function like linguistic signs, carrying layers of meaning that hover between figuration and abstraction.^iv In Crimes of Passion I, Twombly’s marks are not merely aesthetic; they serve as coded symbols that evoke, challenge, and reinterpret the classical past. The gestures on the canvas—bold, raw, and unrefined—act as a form of visual language that draws upon both Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism yet transcends these traditions through an intense autobiographical resonance. His scribbled, stammering, and vigorous lines, suggestive of ancient calligraphy, create a narrative that is fluid and elusive, shifting between personal expression and mythological reference.

Twombly’s diaristic record of mark-making in Crimes of Passion I reveals a profound dialogue with the classical canon, integrating references that span from Sappho’s lyricism to the symbolic forms of Praxiteles. The work’s pseudo-unconscious markings—numbers, geometric shapes, and phrases like “The Sea”—suggest an intertextual network of ancient themes. These inscriptions, whether visible or obscured, invoke a mythological language that Twombly both inherits and transforms. This intertextuality aligns Crimes of Passion I with contemporaneous works like Picasso’s 1963 painting The Rape of the Sabine Women at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, a piece also rooted in the violent eroticism of myth. Twombly’s references to Sappho, with her famed evocations of love and desire, underscore his admiration for classical forms of expression that merge discipline with intensity. Here, Twombly’s admiration for antiquity is not mere reverence but a reimagining of these themes through a modern, fragmented lens, translating the mythic into a language uniquely his own.

“A picture by Twombly can disclose touches as light as butterfly wings, or smudges of darkest density. The weight of every stroke, be it a line or a smear, is constantly diversified. Twombly abjures the traditional paintbrush (“it slows me down”); he banishes “mistakes” by turning false moves into true ones as if, like Freud, he believed it impossible to tell a lie… Twombly thinks on canvas or paper as a philosopher philosophizes by thinking about thinking.”

—John Bernard Myers for Artforum, 1982

ⁱ Nicholas Cullinan, “Insinuating Elegance: The Anxiety of Influence,” Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons, Exh. Cat., London, 2008, p. 84.

ⁱⁱ Heiner Bastian, Cy Twombly: Paintings 1952-1976 Volume I, Berlin 1978, p. 42

ⁱⁱⁱ Roland Barthes, quoted in Cy Twombly: Paintings and Drawings 1954-1977, Exh. Cat., New York, 1979, p. 9.

^iv Ibid.