Cy Twombly

The paintings, prints, sculptures and photographs of Cy Twombly combined traditional European and modern art and had a profound influence on art in America.

Cy Twombly was born in Lexington, Virginia in 1928. He was named Edwin Parker Twombly, Jr. at birth. Both he and his father, Edwin Parker Twombly, Sr., were nicknamed Cy, after Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Cy Young. Edward Parker Twombly, Sr. was a pitcher in Major League Baseball, and played for the Chicago White Sox.

Unlike his father, Twombly was more interested in art than sports. Rather than play ball, Twombly would work on art kits that he ordered from the Sears Roebuck catalogue.

At age 12, Twombly took private art lessons with Catalan artist Pierre Daura, who was visiting his American wife’s family in Lexington. Tombly went on to study at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and then at Washington and Lee University, where his father was a coach and athletic director.

In 1950, Twombly was awarded a scholarship to the Art Students League in New York, where he me Robert Rauschenberg. Rauschenberg encouraged him to attend Black Mountain College near Asheville, North Carolina, where he studied from 1951 to 1952 with Robert Motherwell, Franz Kline and Ben Shahn. In 1952, a grant from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which enabled him to travel to North Africa, Spain, Italy, and France. Part of his travels were with Robert Rauschenberg, with whom he remained lifelong friends.

In 1953, Twombly was drafted into the U.S. Army, and served as a cryptographer in both Augusta, Georgia, and the Pentagon, in Washington, DC. He often did blind drawings lights out during his stint.

Twombly met Italian artist Tatiana Franchetti in Rome. Her brother, Baron Giorgio Franchetti, was an art collector and patron of Twombly’s. The couple married in City Hall in Manhattan, but returned to Italy in 1958.

Twombly’s work was well received in Italy, but it took nearly twenty years for his work to receive critical acclaim in the United States.

Twombly mostly ignored his critics. He rarely gave interviews He wrote a short essay for an Italian art journal in 1957, describing his work: “It does not illustrate. It is the sensation of its own realization.”

Critics and collectors began to understand and appreciate the depth of Twombly’s art. In 1968 the Milwaukee Art Museum held the first retrospective of his work. It was followed by a retrospective at the Whitney in 1979, the Kunsthaus Zürich in 1987, the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris in 1988, MoMA in 1994, with additional venues in Houston, Los Angeles, and Berlin.

In 2001, Menil Collection in Houston, the Kunstmuseum Basel, and the National Gallery of Art in D.C. exhibited Twobly’s sculptures. 

Later retrospectives were held at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome and at the Tate Modern.

His work was exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1964, in 1989 and in 2001 when he was awarded the Golden Lion. In 2010 he was made Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur by the French government.

In 2015, Untitled, (New York City), done in 1968, sold at Sotheby’s for $70,530,000, a record for the artist’s work.

Twombly died on the 5th of July in 2011 in Rome, at age 83.  Tatiana died in 2010. He was survived by their son, Cyrus Alessandro Twombly, who is also a painter and resides in Rome and two grandchildren.