Cy Twombly Catalogue Raisonné of Drawings Vol. 1 includes works on paper produced between 1951 and 1955. It includes several works on paper that the artist produced in Lexington, VA between 1951 and 1952 which will be of particular interest to scholars focused on his early practice. It also catalogues entries from early sketchbooks as well as his famed North African Sketchbooks (1953). It is an indispensable resource for scholars writing about either the sketchbooks themselves or their substantive connections to subsequent paintings, as the sketchbooks are reproduced here in their entirety. The volume also includes Study for Tiznit (1953), a preliminary for one of Twombly’s more frequently exhibited early paintings, and sketches completed in Augusta, Georgia while Twombly was stationed there during his brief military service. The latter will be of particular interest to those writing about Twombly’s line and his idiosyncratic hand, as this was the method through which he later reported developing his signature childlike (but never childish) scrawl. The volume also includes a large set of drawings the artist reportedly intended to publish as an album, though this project never came to fruition. It will be of interest to scholars researching Twombly’s printmaking practice as well, as there are numerous formal resemblances to his later prints throughout; see Cy Twombly Catalogue Raisonné of Printed Graphic Work 1953–2002, ed. Heiner Bastian.

Those researching the North African Sketchbooks might also consult Anne-Grit Becker’s “Marks and Material in Cy Twombly's North African Sketchbooks” (2017) and Cycles and Seasons, ed. Nicholas Serota (2008). The relationship between early paintings and drawings is discussed in Carol A. Nigro’s “Cy Twombly’s Humanist Upbringing” (2008). For more on early works, including those produced at Black Mountain College, primary sources are gathered and reproduced in Writings on Cy Twombly, ed. Nicola del Roscio (2002). Those interested in Twombly’s line and the “unlearning” of his hand, as well as later iterations like the “blackboard” paintings, should consult Roland Barthes’s classic text “The Wisdom of Art” (1979) as well as the catalogue in which it originally appeared, Cy Twombly: Paintings and Drawings 1954–1977. The Gagosian Gallery catalogue In Beauty it is finished: Drawings 1951–2008 (2018) also includes relevant material, as does Cy Twombly at the Hermitage: Fifty Years of Works on Paper, ed. Julie Sylvester (2008). There are also many connections to the sculptures, especially via the North African Sketchbooks, on which see Kate Nesin, Cy Twombly’s Things (2014).

(Publication description by Jamie Danis)

Cy Twombly Catalogue Raisonné of Drawings Volume 1 1951–1955. Edited by Nicola Del Roscio. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2010. Fully illustrated. English edition.