Cy Twombly - Evening & Day Editions New York Monday, April 25, 2016 | Phillips
  • Literature

    Heiner Bastian 67-73

  • Catalogue Essay

    Including: Title Print; Homer; Sappho; Pindar; Callimachus; Theocritus; and Plato

  • 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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35

Five Greek Poets and a Philosopher

1978
The complete set of seven lithographs (six in color) with embossment, on Richard de Bas hand-mould paper, with full margins,
25 7/8 x 20 1/8 in. (65.6 x 51.2 cm)
all signed with initials, annotated `OK' and inscribed `(for Hans) in pencil (a printer's copy, aside from the edition of 40 and 9 artist's proofs), published by Propyläen Verlag, Berlin, the sheets loose (as issued) with the accompanying original blue portfolio with printed title, all framed.

Estimate
$30,000 - 40,000 

Sold for $40,000

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Evening & Day Editions

New York Auction 25 April 2016