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Cy Twombly

Photographs

October 10–December 12, 2015
Davies Street, London

Installation view Artwork © Nicola Del Roscio Foundation. Photo: Stuart Burford

Installation view

Artwork © Nicola Del Roscio Foundation. Photo: Stuart Burford

Installation view Artwork © Nicola Del Roscio Foundation. Photo: Stuart Burford

Installation view

Artwork © Nicola Del Roscio Foundation. Photo: Stuart Burford

Installation view Artwork © Nicola Del Roscio Foundation. Photo: Stuart Burford

Installation view

Artwork © Nicola Del Roscio Foundation. Photo: Stuart Burford

Installation view Artwork © Nicola Del Roscio Foundation. Photo: Stuart Burford

Installation view

Artwork © Nicola Del Roscio Foundation. Photo: Stuart Burford

Works Exhibited

Cy Twombly, Strawberries (Gaeta), 2008 Color dry-print, 10 ¼ × 9 ⅞ inches (26 × 25.1 cm), edition of 6© Nicola Del Roscio Foundation

Cy Twombly, Strawberries (Gaeta), 2008

Color dry-print, 10 ¼ × 9 ⅞ inches (26 × 25.1 cm), edition of 6
© Nicola Del Roscio Foundation

About

Gagosian London is pleased to announce an exhibition of photographs by Cy Twombly at the Davies Street gallery, to coincide with the exhibition of his paintings, sculptures, and works on paper at the new Grosvenor Hill gallery.

From his days as a student at Black Mountain College during the early 1950s until his death in 2011 at the age of 83, Twombly captured his daily life in photographs. He recorded the verdant landscapes of Virginia and the coasts of Italy, close-up details of ancient buildings and sculptures, studio interiors, and still lifes of objects and flowers.

Beginning in the early 1990s, Twombly used specialized copiers to enlarge his Polaroid images on matte paper, resulting in subtle distortions that approximate the timeless qualities of his paintings and sculptures with their historical and literary allusions. Recalling the pictorialism of photographers such as Alfred Stieglitz, the expressive nature of Twombly’s prints transcends the mechanical aspects of the medium.

This exhibition brings together more than twenty photographs of natural subjects—including tulips, strawberries, cabbages, and lemons—taken in Rome and Gaeta, Italy, between 1985 and 2008.

Throughout his sixty-year career, Twombly infused the physical and emotional aspects of Abstract Expressionism with a wealth of historic and mythic allusion. At once epic and intimate, his work is steeped with references to poetry and classical mythology. 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.

Cy Twombly

Cy Twombly

Olivier Berggruen and Mary Jacobus spoke about the works in the inaugural exhibition at Gagosian’s Grosvenor Hill outpost.

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.