Cy Twombly Catalogue Raisonné of Drawings Vol. 4 catalogues works on paper produced between 1964 and 1969. Nicola Del Roscio’s introductory essay, “Some Notes on Cy Twombly,” “describe[s] the atmosphere surrounding Cy in the 60s” (10). Reflections include descriptions of the artist’s drawing practice as well as of the social and artistic circles in New York in which Twombly participated during this period. Del Roscio also describes day trips to the campagna romana, Twombly’s time spent in various Italian cities such as Bolsena, the Horst P. Horst photoshoot for Vogue (see Valentine Lawford, “Roman Classic Surprise” [1966]), and interactions with peers such as Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol.

The contents of the volume will be of particular interest to scholars researching connections between Twombly and other artists; see e.g., Untitled (1964, cat. no. 22), which might be productively considered in dialogue with Jasper Johns’s numbers series. Other works catalogued in this volume include Murder of Olofernes (1964), a series of Untitled drawings (1965) with inscriptions to Sappho, Untitled (Variations on the Elegies) (1965) inscribed “to Valéry,” multiple works referencing Catullus, a series of Greetings from Gorgo (1965–66), and his Letters of Resignation (1959–67). Untitled (1965, cat. no. 70 and 73) include the same sort of diagrammatic palettes and Sapphic ideograms recorded elsewhere in the paintings; for more on this, see Cy Twombly: Making Past Present, ed. Christine Kondeleon and Kate Nesin (2020). There are a series of “blackboard” works on paper completed with oil paint and wax crayon (1969), including some with an inverted light ground. Other notable works with connections to recurrent themes in Twombly’s oeuvre include a Cnidian Venus series (1966–67) and an Untitled work (1965) inscribed “say goodbye to the plains of Asia Minor.” As Del Roscio notes, Twombly traveled with his drawing supplies, and the more portable nature of the medium results in a large number of artworks produced in different locations, Munich, Val Gardena, St. Martin, and Captiva Island among them. The Untitled collages from Captiva Island notably include reproductions of studies by Leonardo da Vinci.

Related literature includes Making Past Present for further discussion of Sappho, Catullus, and Venus. On the Letters of Resignation, see the eponymous catalogue, ed. Heiner Bastian (1991) and Peter Schwenger’s “Enigmatic Epistolarity: Twombly’s Letter of Resignation” (2017); Roland Barthes’s “The Wisdom of Art” (1979) may also be helpful. For discussion of poetry and inscriptions, see Mary Jacobus, Reading Cy Twombly: Poetry in Paint (2016) and Thierry Greub, Inscriptions (2022).

(Publication description by Jamie Danis)

Cy Twombly Catalogue Raisonné of Drawings Volume 4 1964–1969. Edited by Nicola Del Roscio. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2014. Fully illustrated. English edition.