CY TWOMBLY | Untitled

Galleria La Tartaruga, Rome
Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels
Private Collection, Belgium (acquired from the above circa 1960)
Thence by descent to the present owner in 2000

This work is in good condition overall. There is a slight undulation to the sheet, inherent to the artist’s working method, and the sheet is buckling slightly in the corners. There is evidence of light wear and handling to the edges. The sheet has discolored slightly with age. Under close inspection, hairline cracks are visible to the thickly painted areas with some resultant spots of loss to the white areas. There is evidence of minor foxing throughout the sheet. The sheet is cornered into the mat and hinged verso to the mat intermittently along the edges. Framed under Plexiglas.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

In the present work, Untitled, Cy Twombly's visual language becomes one of signs and signifiers, as typology and numerical symbols are powerfully united with fervent, abstract gesture. Untitled exhibits a violently striated surface of discontinuous, erratic strokes and insistent repetition, culminating in an excellent example of the artist's distinct and ambiguous style. Executed in 1961, during one of the most productive years of his career, the present work exhibits the dynamic surface of Twombly's "cipher space" in which mythology, poetry and the tragedies inherent to both become palpable through intense introspection and a rare spectacle of gestural freedom (Heiner Bastian, Cy Twombly: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Volume II, 1961-1965, Munich 1993, p. 26). During this formative period, Twombly worked in a bright, expansive studio near the Campo de'Fiori in Rome. The city, with its history of classical antiquity and deeply intrinsic Mediterranean culture, greatly informed the artist's intellectual preoccupation and artistic production. Multicolored patches of ochre, pink, yellow and orange oil paint, wax crayon and graphite collide in Untitled and exemplify Twombly's idiosyncratic, layered process of mark-making. Twombly has vigorously punctuated the composition's expansive white field with symbols reproduced continuously throughout his oeuvre, including multiple "x" forms repeatedly enshrined in boxes, clouds of soft paint hues, and Roman numerical counting sequences. Twombly's marks here act as reductive iconography where the notion of writing has become a central and compelling tenet to the act of painting abstractly.

Where the city of Rome informed his ideological framework, it also offered a sense of privacy and isolation. As an American, Twombly's expatriation permitted the artist to distance himself from the New York school of Abstract Expressionism dominated by the likes of Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline and Jackson Pollock. Yet Twombly's allusion to epic narratives, grand myths and ancient history provides a profound link between conceptualism, minimalism and even Abstract Expressionism. The result is a highly individual and enigmatic body of work, in which Untitled plays a formative part.



This work will be included in the Addendum to the Catalogue Raisonné of Cy Twombly Drawings, edited by Nicola Del Roscio.