Cy Twombly

Edwin Parker "Cy" Twombly, Jr. (April 25, 1928 – July 5, 2011) was an American painter, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor. He painted of large-scale, freely scribbled, calligraphic and graffiti-like works on solid backgrounds of mostly gray, tan, or off-white colors. In 1951–2 he studied at Black mountain college, this was an important period for his involvement with Abstract Expressionism. His paintings are now in the permanent collections of the New York's Museum of Modern Art and the Musée du Louvre in Paris.

Many of his later paintings and works on paper shifted toward "romantic symbolism", their titles can be interpreted visually through shapes and forms and words which were written in his signature stylised handwriting. In the 1960s Twombly used subjective, erotic signs in his paintings, and he began to use more intense and denser colours. Twombly often quoted the poet Stéphane Mallarmé as well as the names of mythical figures. Examples of this are his Apollo and The Artist and a series of eight drawings consisting solely of inscriptions of the word "VIRGIL”. Between 1967 and 1971 the 'grey paintings'. This series features terse, colourless scrawls, reminiscent of chalk on a blackboard, that form no actual words. He used the unusual technique of sitting on the shoulders of a friend, who moved back and forth along the length of the canvas. This allowed Twombly to create fluid, continuous lines.


From 1976, Twombly again produced sculptures. He lightly painted them in white to make them seem somewhat classical. They were assembled from materials he found and re-used such as pieces of wood or packaging. Some were cast in bronze and covered in white paint and plaster.
 Cy Twombly - "Mars & The Artist" (1975) oil paint, wax crayon, collage & pencil on paper. This piece contains layers in the many different materials used and the textures they create. White wax crayon and paint is used to cover or partially conceal lines and words which is then overlaid by collage giving the piece a three dimensional aspect. Layers of meaning are incorporated into the piece through Twombly's signature handwriting; it features words such as Mars, Artist and 1975. This relates to the contextual information of the piece, allowing it to be understood through the detail buried within. It is inspired by Greek and Roman mythology; Mars is the Roman God of war. The colours are very neutral apart from the red crayon marks which could link to this theme of war.