Cy Twombly

I read about Cy Twombly's current exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in this month's issue of Elle Decor. Unfortunately I could find only a thumbnail of the image that accompanied the blurb, which is an untitled piece from 2001 and is what sparked my interest in the artist. I poked around and found some additional works of inspiration.

Cy Twombly (born April 25, 1928) is an American artist well known for his large-scale, freely scribbled, calligraphic-style graffiti paintings, on solid fields of mostly gray, tan, or off-white colors.

Twombly is best known for blurring the line between drawing and painting. Many of his best-known paintings of the late 1960s are reminiscent of a school blackboard on which someone has practiced cursive e's—or (for his paintings of the late 1950s and early 1960s), perhaps, hundreds of years of bathroom graffiti. Twombly had at this point discarded painting figurative, representational subject-matter, citing the line or smudge—each mark with its own history—as its proper subject.

Nicola's Iris, 1991


Proteus, 1984

“Cy Twombly’s distinctive canvases merge drawing, painting, and symbolic gesture in the pursuit of a direct, intuitive form of expression. Twombly’s paintings—florid evocations offering homage to art, myth, and allegory—are a form of improvisational writing. More performative than illustrative, Twombly’s inimitable visual language of scribbles, scratches, and scrawls are employed to both suggestive and sublime effects.”

Untitled, 2007


The Rose (IV), 2008


Wilder Shores of Love, 1985

Is it any surprise that of his vast, decade-spanning collection of works, the florals are my favorites?