Cy Twombly - Evening & Day Editions London Wednesday, June 8, 2016 | Phillips

Evening & Day Editions

London Auction 9 June 2016

  • Literature

    Heiner Bastian 25

  • 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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23

Cy Twombly

Roman Notes V, from Roman Notes

1970
Offset lithograph in colours, on heavy offset paper, the full sheet,
S. 86.6 x 69.6 cm (34 1/8 x 27 3/8 in.)
signed, dated '70' and numbered 50/100 in pencil on the reverse (there were also 10 artist's proofs), published by Neuendorf Verlag, Hamburg, framed.

Estimate
£20,000 - 30,000 

Sold for £32,500

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Robert Kennan
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Evening & Day Editions

London Auction 9 June 2016