This publication includes three softcovers volumes collected in a hardcover box set, published by Electa with the support of Gruppo MAIRE in a bilingual edition (Italian/English).

The first volume, Roland Barthes. Cy Twombly, features the author’s essays dedicated to the artist, “Non Multa Sed Multum”, and “The Wisdom of Art” first published in 1979[1], and introduced by Andrea Cortellessa’s essay, “Vedere il linguaggio.” Cortellessa’s critical essay reflects on Roland Barthes’s capability “of ‘seeing’ […] the materiality of a sign finally freed […] from assertion” in relation to Cy Twombly’s works. Roland Baarthes’s essay “Non Multa Sed Multum” provides a critical, philosophical, and semiotic analysis of Cy Twombly’s work, focusing on specific elements of his practice, for instance writing, culture, gauche, support, body, and morality. In his second essay, “The Wisdom of Art,” Roland Barthes delves deeper into Twombly's art and its meanings, concluding that “Twombly’s art - this is its morality, and also its great historical singularity - ‘does not want to take anything’; it hangs together, it floats, it drifts between desire, which subtly animates the hand, and politeness, which is the discreet rejection of any desire to capture.”

The second volume, Fabio Mauri. Nel millenovecentosessanta gli anni cinquanta avevano dieci anni, includes the artist’s essay with the same title and the images from a selection of works by the artists of Scuola di Piazza del Popolo, held in the collections of the Galleria Nazionale. In his essay, Fabio Mauri describes the city Rome in the mid of the century, highlighting the places and the characters of those years.

The third volume, Cy Twombly… la mia carissima ROMA…, features the essays by Renata Cristina Mazzantini, Nicola Del Roscio, Mariastella Margozzi, and Stefano Marson, and the list of the thirteen Cy Twombly’s works exhibited in the permanent gallery dedicated to the artist at GNAMC, eleven of which are part of the 2025 donation of the Cy Twombly Foundation to the museum. Focus of the essay “Cy Twombly dona all’Italia: opere, spazi e futuro” by Renata Cristina Mazzantini, Museum’s Director, is the donation of Cy Twombly’s works to the museum and the opening of a permanent gallery dedicated to the artist. The essay “Viaggio in Italia” by Nicola Del Roscio, President of the Cy Twombly Foundation, is a special portrait of the deep bond between the artist and the city of Rome. “Twombly, il poeta che intende le voci del mondo” by Mariastella Margozzi is a narration of the life of the artist in Rome in the early 50s, introducing the figures of Giorgio Franchetti, Plinio De Martiis, and Palma Bucarelli, three decisive figures for the artist’s career in the Italian panorama. Stefano Marson’s essay, “Twombly, il museo e la Biennale di Venezia del 1964,” is dedicated to the first participation of the artist to the XXXII Biennale di Venezia with the painting, Second Voyage to Italy (La Caduta di Iperione), entered in the Collection of Galleria Nazionale in the same year.

Published on the occasion of the opening of the permanent gallery dedicated to Cy Twombly at GNAMC-Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome, following the donation of the artist’s works by the Cy Twombly Foundation.

Cy Twombly. Edited by GNAMC - Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea. Milan: Electa, 2025. Italian/English edition.

[1] Lambert, Yvon, ed. Catalogue raisonné des œuvres sur papier de Cy Twombly, Volume VI, 1973-1976. Milan: Multhipla Edizioni. Text by Roland Barthes, “Non multa sed multum”; New York: Whitney Museum of American Art. Cy Twombly. Paintings and Drawings 1954-1977. Text by Roland Barthes, “Sagesse de l’Art / The Wisdom of Art.”