Cy Twombly
Catalogue Raisonné of Drawings
Volume 2, 1956–1960
Volume 2, 1956–1960
Cy Twombly Catalogue Raisonné of Drawings Vol. 2 documents works on paper produced between 1956 and 1960. It opens with a brief reflection by Nicola Del Roscio on the artist’s final days. There are several works either sold by or otherwise connected to Galleria La Tartaruga, run by Twombly’s brother-in-law Giorgio Franchetti. This volume includes works produced as preparatory sketches for larger scale paintings as well as those produced as finished works. There are many resonances with the sparse canvases of the late 1950s and early 1960s (see, e.g., those reproduced in Cy Twombly Gallery: The Menil Collection, Houston, ed. Julie Sylvester and Nicola Del Roscio, 2013), including in the use of various combinations of pencil, house paint, and crayon. The volume notably includes Twombly’s drawings and collages executed in Sperlonga, which will likely be of interest to researchers writing about Poems to the Sea (1959), executed contemporaneously. Many of these works refer to Sappho and will therefore be of interest to scholars focused on classical poetry as well. By 1960, the works on paper are more frequently conceived as artworks in their own right, with subjects ranging from Priapus to Verlaine to Lido. The series See Naples and Die (1960), executed in Ischia, offers connections to his paintings Death in Naples (1963). Untitled (To Keats) (1960), Ode to Psyche (1960), and On the Mists of Idleness (1960) will be of interest to those researching either Twombly’s engagement with John Keats or later artworks substantively engaging with Keats such as Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor (1993), which once shared its title with the latter drawing. There is also a selection of drawings completed aboard the SS Leonardo da Vinci while Twombly sailed from New York to Naples, which includes inscriptions from Pindar and Sappho.
Relevant literature includes Cy Twombly: Paintings and Drawings 1954–1977, Whitney Museum of American Art (1979). As many of these drawings include legible inscriptions, Thierry Greub’s Inscriptions (2022) may also be a helpful reference source. For more on Study for the School of Athens, see Dominique Baqué’s Cy Twombly: Sous le signe d’Apollon et de Dionysos (2016). Mary Jacobus’s Reading Cy Twombly: Poetry in Paint (2016) includes discussion of Keats and other poetry, and Cy Twombly: Making Past Present, ed. Christine Kondeleon and Kate Nesin (2020) discusses Twombly’s engagement with Sappho.
(Publication description by Jamie Danis)
Cy Twombly Catalogue Raisonné of Drawings Volume 2 1956–1960. Edited by Nicola Del Roscio. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2011. Fully illustrated. English edition.