2011-07-05

CY TWOMBLY [born Edwin Parker Twombly Jr.], was an American painter, sculptor, and photographer who died on this date (b: 4/25/1928).

Twombly influenced artists such as Anselm Kiefer, Francesco Clemente, Julian Schnabel, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. His best-known works are typically large-scale, freely-scribbled, calligraphic and graffiti-like works on solid fields of mostly gray, tan, or off-white colors. His later paintings and works on paper shifted toward “romantic symbolism”, and their titles can be interpreted visually through shapes and forms and words. Twombly often quoted poets such as Stéphane Mallarmé, Rainer Maria Rilke, and John Keats, as well as classical myths and allegories, in his works. Examples of this are his Apollo and The Artist and a series of eight drawings consisting solely of inscriptions of the word “VIRGIL”.

Twombly’s works are in the permanent collections of modern art museums globally, including the Menil Collection in Houston, the Tate Modern in London, New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Munich’s Museum Brandhorst. He was commissioned for a ceiling at the Musée du Louvre in Paris.

Twombly was born in Lexington, Virginia, on April 25, 1928. Twombly’s father, also nicknamed “Cy”, pitched for the Chicago White Sox. They were both nicknamed after the baseball great Cy Young, who pitched for, among others, the Cardinals, Red Sox, Indians, and Braves.

At age 12, Twombly began to take private art lessons with the Catalan modern master Pierre Daura. After graduating from Lexington High School in 1946, Twombly attended Darlington School in Rome, Georgia, and studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. On a tuition scholarship from 1950 to 1951, he studied at the Art Students League of New York, where he met Robert Rauschenberg, with whom he was briefly romantically involved. 

Rauschenberg encouraged him to attend Black Mountain College near Asheville, North Carolina. At Black Mountain in 1951 and 1952 he studied with Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell and Ben Shahn, and met John Cage. The poet and rector of the College, Charles Olson, had a great influence on him. In 1957, Twombly moved to Rome and made it his primary city.

Living in Italy, Twombly met Tatiana Franchetti, an Italian aristocrat – sister of his patron Baron Giorgio Franchetti. They married in 1959. At the same time, Twombly began an affair with Nicola Del Roscio who was his assistant, archivist, and lover for the next 50 years. Twombly kept a home and studio close to Del Roscio’s place.
 
In another example of de-gaying notable figures, when Twombly’s obituaries were written in 2011, even the one in the NEW YORK TIMES, his relationships with Rauschenberg and Del Roscio weren’t mentioned, yet they somehow found a way to include his wife, who died the year before.