Menu

Extended through July 2, 2015

Cy Twombly

April 23–July 2, 2015
980 Madison Avenue, New York

Installation view Artwork © Cy Twombly Foundation. Collection Cy Twombly Foundation. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork © Cy Twombly Foundation. Collection Cy Twombly Foundation. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork © Cy Twombly Foundation. Collection Cy Twombly Foundation. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork © Cy Twombly Foundation. Collection Cy Twombly Foundation. Photo: Rob McKeever

Works Exhibited

Cy Twombly, Untitled, 2004–09 Bronze, 49 ⅛ × 12 ⅛ × 11 ⅝ inches (125 × 31.1 × 29.6 cm)Collection Cy Twombly Foundation© Cy Twombly Foundation. Photo: Mike Bruce

Cy Twombly, Untitled, 2004–09

Bronze, 49 ⅛ × 12 ⅛ × 11 ⅝ inches (125 × 31.1 × 29.6 cm)
Collection Cy Twombly Foundation
© Cy Twombly Foundation. Photo: Mike Bruce

Cy Twombly, Blooming, 2001–08 Acrylic and wax crayon on panel, in 10 parts, 98 ⅜ × 196 ⅞ inches (250 × 500 cm)Private Collection© Cy Twombly Foundation. Photo: Mike Bruce

Cy Twombly, Blooming, 2001–08

Acrylic and wax crayon on panel, in 10 parts, 98 ⅜ × 196 ⅞ inches (250 × 500 cm)
Private Collection
© Cy Twombly Foundation. Photo: Mike Bruce

Cy Twombly, Untitled, 2004 Plaster, wood, acrylic, nails, and iron, 33 ⅞ × 8 ¼ × 9 inches (86 × 21 × 22.9 cm)Collection Cy Twombly Foundation© Cy Twombly Foundation. Photo: Tom Powel

Cy Twombly, Untitled, 2004

Plaster, wood, acrylic, nails, and iron, 33 ⅞ × 8 ¼ × 9 inches (86 × 21 × 22.9 cm)
Collection Cy Twombly Foundation
© Cy Twombly Foundation. Photo: Tom Powel

About

Each line is now the actual experience with its own innate history. It does not illustrate—it is the sensation of its own realization.
—Cy Twombly

Gagosian New York is pleased to present a group of the last paintings and sculptures of the late Cy Twombly, many of which have never been seen publicly.

Throughout his sixty-year career, Twombly infused the physical and emotional aspects of Abstract Expressionism with a wealth of historic and mythic allusion. He combined elements of gestural abstraction, drawing, and writing in a highly idiosyncratic and potent expression. At once epic and intimate, his work is steeped with references to poetry, classical mythology, and history. The alternation between the visible and the hidden, between present and past, and the struggle between memory and oblivion are unifying themes in his work.

The Bacchus series (2004-08) is charged with visceral energies. In huge arcs and drips of sanguine paint, sensation courses through the annals of myth and history. In later untitled works, cursive white lines against dark blue fields similarly describe the gestural force that first appeared in the “blackboard” paintings of the 1960s and early 1970s. Blooming (2001–08) is an efflorescent ten-panel painting spanning more than sixteen feet in width. Twombly captures and memorializes in patches of lush crayon and paint, and drips and flows of startling color, the fragile, heady nature of the peony flowers so revered in Japanese aesthetic contemplation.

Read more

Image of Cy Twombly's Treatise on the Veil (Second Version), 1970

Cy Twombly: Imperfect Paradise

Eleonora Di Erasmo, cocurator of Un/veiled: Cy Twombly, Music, Inspirations, a program of concerts, video screenings, and works by Cy Twombly at the Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio, Rome, reflects on the resonances and networks of inspiration between the artist and music. The program was the result of an extensive three-year study, done at the behest of Nicola Del Roscio in the Rome and Gaeta offices of the Cy Twombly Foundation, intended to collect, document, and preserve compositions by musicians around the world who have been inspired by Twombly’s work, or to establish an artistic dialogue with them.

Black and white image of the interior of Cy Twombly’s apartment in Rome

Cy Twombly: Making Past Present

In 2020, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, announced their plan for a survey of Cy Twombly’s artwork alongside selections from their permanent ancient Greek and Roman collection. The survey was postponed due to the lockdowns necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic, but was revived in 2022 with a presentation at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles from August 2 through October 30. In 2023, the exhibition will arrive at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The curator for the exhibition, Christine Kondoleon, and Kate Nesin, author of Cy Twombly’s Things (2014) and advisor for the show, speak with Gagosian director Mark Francis about the origin of the exhibition and the aesthetic and poetic resonances that give the show its title: Making Past Present.

Cy Twombly, Untitled (Say Goodbye, Catallus, to the Shores of Asia Minor), 1994, oil, acrylic, oil stick, crayon, and graphite on three canvases,

Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor

Thierry Greub tracks the literary references in Cy Twomblys epic painting of 1994.

Carrie Mae Weems’s The Louvre (2006), on the cover of Gagosian Quarterly, Summer 2021

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2021

The Summer 2021 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Carrie Mae Weems’s The Louvre (2006) on its cover.

Cy Twombly, Untitled, 1990, acrylic, wax crayon, and pencil on handmade paper, 30 ⅝ × 21 ⅝ inches (77.8 × 54.8 cm)

Twombly and the Poets

Anne Boyer, the inaugural winner of the Cy Twombly Award in Poetry, composes a poem in response to TwomblyAristaeus Mourning the Loss of His Bees (1973) and introduces a portfolio of the painters works accompanied by the poems that inspired them.

Gerhard Richter’s Helen (1963) on the cover of Gagosian Quarterly, Spring 2021

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2021

The Spring 2021 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Gerhard Richter’s Helen (1963) on its cover.