The publication is a limited edition reprint by Gagosian Gallery, published on the occasion of the exhibition Cy Twombly at the Madison Avenue venue in New York.

The monograph is entirely dedicated to the 1980 cycle of Five Day Wait at Jiayuguan, on display in the exhibition. This cycle of fourteen drawings was first exhibited at the 39th Venice Biennale in 1980 for which occasion the first edition of the volume was originally published by Gabriele Stocchi in 1981.

The volume features the illustrations of the fourteen drawings from the cycle, the works’ check list and the editorial information from the first edition of the publication.

The drawings, made by the artist in Rome during the spring of 1980, takes its name from the Chinese city of Jiayuguan, which the artist visited during a long journey in the fall of 1979 through Russia, Central Asia and Afghanistan.

The dimension of travel is an important source of intellectual nourishment for Cy Twombly's work, as Nicola Del Roscio emphasised in his essay “Some notes on Cy Twombly,” published in the fourth volume of the Catalogue Raisonné, Cy Twombly Drawings: “Cy Twombly benefitted from the fact that he lived on both shores of the Atlantic and, in particular, on the Mediterranean. That made him not only an American or European artist but bestowed upon him one of the rarest gifts: the possibility to continuously renew his art in a creative way up until the end of his life. Moreover, he acquired through his wanderings between countries and cultures and constant reading a rare wealth of experience that he synthesized in his work. I always had the impression that he was a classic mind nourished by a globalized intellect.”

The volume was published in 2025 on the occasion of the exhibition Cy Twombly at Gagosian Gallery, New York (January 23 – March 22, 2025) and in conjunction with the exhibition catalogue, Cy Twombly.

Cy Twombly. Five Day Wait a Jiayuguan. New York: Gagosian Gallery, 2025. English edition.