Marking the 10th anniversary of the Cy Twombly Gallery at The Menil Collection, which opened in 1995, this exhibition will present more than 75 works on paper by one of the most important American artists living today.
Cy Twombly (b. 1928) holds a solitary position among artists of his generation. Although emerging in 1950s New York alongside contemporaries Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, he continues to evade clear-cut affiliation with Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Minimalism. Twombly’s breadth of imagination and interdisciplinary tendencies traverse vast distances of time and place, resulting in an art at once Dionysian and Apollian, lavish and spare, modern and ancient.
Twombly has used a variety of materials and methods — paint, crayon, collage — and drawn inspiration from diverse sources ranging from famous battles of classic history to Russian Constructivism. The works span the last half century and include examples from his early years in the 1950s, his famous chalkboard period of the early 1970s, as well as works as recent as 2002. Among the key works in the show are Apollo and the Artist (1975), Proteus (1984), and Petals of Fire (1989). The exhibition was originally organized by the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia; Julie Sylvester, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art. Its presentation at The Menil Collection has been coordinated by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. This project is funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services through an Act of Congress. In Houston the exhibition is supported in part by the City of Houston.
This exhibition was originally organized by the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia; Julie Sylvester, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art. Its presentation at The Menil Collection has been coordinated by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. This project is funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services by an Act of Congress. The American tour has been made possible by generous support from The Brown Foundation, Inc., Houston.
In Houston the exhibition is generously supported in part by Sotheby's, Nancy Allen, Sanford and Susie Criner, Barbara and Michael Gamson, Sara Dodd-Spickelmier and Keith Spickelmier with the H. Fort Flowers Foundation, and the City of Houston.
Generous funding for "Cy Twombly: Lepanto" is provided by Merrill Lynch. Additional support is provided by Charles Butt, Sara Dodd Spickelmier and Keith Spickelmier, and the H. Fort Flowers Foundation.
Untitled, 1970
Wax crayon and house paint on paper
Private collection
Untitled, 1987
Acrylic paint on paper
Private collection
Petals of Fire, 1989
Acrylic paint, oil stick, graphite,
color pencil on paper
Private collection
© Cy Twombly. Photo courtesy Gagosian Gallery
