Young Cy Twombly with a sculpture, Lexington, VA.
Courtesy Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio
Edwin Parker Twombly is born in Lexington, Virginia, on April 25. His father, Edwin Parker Twombly Sr., was born in Groveland, Massachusetts, and his mother, Mary Velma Richardson, came from Bar Harbor, Maine. Edwin Twombly Sr. was a professional baseball player who once pitched for the Chicago White Sox in the American League. He was Athletic Director of the Washington and Lee University in Lexington and he was so admired by the college that a new swimming pool was named the “Twombly Natatorium” in his honor. The artist inherited his father’s baseball nickname “Cy”, after the baseball player Cyclone Young.
From the age of 14 to 18, Twombly attends lectures on painting given by the artist Pierre Daura. Daura is a Spanish artist from Menorca (Balearic Islands), a refugee in Paris during the Spanish Civil War, who had married a woman from Virginia and come to live in Lexington. His lectures and studio classes focus on European contemporary art and its history.
After graduating from Lexington High School, attends Darlington School for Boys in Rome, Georgia.
Spends summer in Ogunquit, an art colony in Maine, and in Groveland, Massachusetts. In the fall he enrolls in the Boston Museum School where German Expressionism is the primary influence. His grandfather lives in Boston. Twombly is greatly interested in the Dada movement, Surrealism, the art of Kurt Schwitters, Chaïm Soutine and Lovis Corinth. The works of Alberto Giacometti and Jean Dubuffet also impress him. He visits the Frick Collection in New York to study the old masters.
Continues his studies in Boston.
Enters the newly established department of art at Washington and Lee University in Lexington. His teacher, Marion Junkin, immediately recognizes his talent and encourages him to apply for a scholarship at the Art Students League of New York, where she had studied. He receives a $1000 grant from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond.
On a tuition scholarship, he continues his studies at the Art Students League in New York. His teachers are Will Barnett, Morris Kantor and Vaclav Vytlacil. During the second semester he meets another young artist, Robert Rauschenberg, with whom he shares the same intellectual interests and goals as an artist. In New York he is able to see the avant-garde shows of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still and Robert Motherwell at Betty Parsons and Samuel Kootz Gallery, as well as the work of Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline at Egan Gallery.
Attends summer and winter semesters at Black Mountain College, North Carolina, where Ben Shahn, Robert Motherwell and the poet Charles Olson are artists in residence. He captures Shahn’s attention, becoming his favourite pupil that year. Motherwell doesn’t comment much on the work of the young Twombly, apart from saying that he has nothing to teach him.
Twombly also studies photography with Hazel-Frieda Larsen with fellow students Robert Rauschenberg and Dorothea Rockburne, and he makes photographs using a pinhole camera.
In November Twombly has his first one-person exhibition at The Seven Stairs Gallery in Chicago, arranged by the photographer Aaron Siskind and the curator Noah Goldowsky, and he exhibits paintings completed that summer at Black Mountain College. At the end of the year, Robert Motherwell writes an enthusiastic text for the exhibition leaflet and initiates Twombly’s first exhibition in New York at Samuel Kootz Gallery, a two-person exhibition with Brody Gandy.
He makes trips to the southern United States, to Charleston, New Orleans, Key West, and from Key West on to Cuba. Works in Virginia during the summer, visiting Black Mountain College where Franz Kline, Robert Rauschenberg, Jack Tworkov and John Cage are residing. He engages in photography with a pinhole camera and photographs Franz Kline and John Cage.
In the fall Twombly receives a travelling scholarship of $1800 from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and leaves New York by boat for his first visit to Europe and North Africa with Robert Rauschenberg. He disembarks in Palermo, visits Naples and reaches Rome in the first days of September. Later that month he travels to Florence, Siena, Assisi and Venice. In October he departs from Rome to Morocco for the winter months, travelling to Casablanca, Marrakech, the Atlas Mountains and Tangier.
He visits Paul Bowles in Tétouan and takes day trips with him to surrounding villages in December.
Returns to Rome by train, visiting Spain en route. In February Twombly has his first show in Italy at the Galleria di Via della Croce 71.
On March 14, in Florence at the Galleria d’Arte Contemporanea, he exhibits tapestries made in Tangier and Tétouan.
In the late spring he returns to America to work on paintings, sculptures, and monoprints, using Robert Rauschenberg’s New York studio at 61 Fulton Street.
He has a group show in September at the Stable Gallery, founded by Eleanor Ward.
In October he shows at the Little Gallery, Princeton, New York owned by Larom Munson, and according to Thomas Wilber, exhibits paintings from 1949 with small collages and sculptures.
Drafted into the United States Army, he completes his basic training at Camp Gordon near Augusta, Georgia, and he is stationed in Washington D.C., as a cryptologist. On weekends in Augusta, he rents a hotel room to produce drawings at night in the dark in order to obliterate any graphically expert routine. These drawings form the basis for his first one-man show at the Stable Gallery in 1955, as well as the new direction in his works from then on.
Twombly is still stationed in Washington D.C., assigned to the military’s cryptography department. He often travels to New York during periods of leave, working on the paintings that are shown at the Stable Gallery the following year.
In August Twombly is discharged from the army. He takes a small apartment on 263 William Street in Manhattan, New York. He begins working on a group of six or eight grey-ground paintings, as documented in photographs taken at Rauschenberg’s Fulton Street studio, where they are painted. He starts working on Panorama.
He also makes plaster sculptures in the sand in Staten Island, all of which are now lost.
Twombly has his first one-person exhibition at the Stable Gallery in New York.
In February he accepts a teaching position at the Art Department of Southern Seminary and Junior College in Buena Vista, Virginia, for a half of this year and one semester of 1956.
An exhibition is held at Catholic University, Washington D.C., of Twombly’s early works in conjunction with African sculptures.The show, organized by a priest, Father Alexis Robertson, includes eight paintings – Tiznit, A-Oe, Solon I, Solon II, Quaday, La-La, Volubilus, Marrakech and four drawings.
Eleanor Ward of the Stable Gallery tries to aid Twombly’s attempt to obtain a grant from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in April. She, along with Thomas B. Hess, executive editor of Art News, and Conrad Marca-Relli write the recommendation letters.
In the fall he returns to his apartment in New York on 263 William Street where he paints Criticism, Free Wheeler, Academy, The Geeks, and other paintings and sculptures.
Since his attempt to obtain a grant from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has failed, he agrees to renew his teaching position at the Southern Seminary until the spring semester of 1956.
Second one-person exhibition at the Stable Gallery in January.
He is in Lexington, Virginia, in February.
Twombly tries once again to obtain a travel fellowship from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, this time to visit Paris, Egypt, Athens, Crete and Mykonos. This application is also unsuccessful and he moves back to his William Street apartment in New York for the rest of the year.
Twombly visits his friends and fellow artists Conrad Marca-Relli and Joseph Cornell on Long Island.
Cy Twombly in the Studio on William Street, New York City 1956 (self-portrait).
Courtesy Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio
Twombly has his third one-person show at the Stable Gallery in January, where Panorama is shown. Seven or eight paintings are shown, along with six drawings.
In February he leaves New York to spend the time in Italy at suggestion of the Italian painter Toti Scialoja. He also works on drawings in Grottaferrata for two months in a friend’s house near Rome. In the summer he takes a house on the island of Procida, in the bay of Naples, and continues to work on drawings. The artist destroys these drawings later in the year.
He rents an apartment in Rome facing the Coliseum where Olympia, Arcadia, Blue Room and Sunset are painted. Twombly reads Stéphane Mallarmé, who will become an influence on later drawings. Later in the fall he works in the studio of Salvatore Scarpitta in Via Margutta in Rome.
Works in an empty house in the Via Appia Pignatelli in Rome.
Has his first exhibition in Rome at the Galleria La Tartaruga of Plinio De Martiis, showing a selection of paintings. He remains in Italy, and the exhibition of the Galleria La Tartaruga travels to the Galleria del Cavallino, Venice, and the Galleria del Naviglio, Milan. At the end of November the artist returns to New York as planned. In New York he signs up with the Leo Castelli Gallery.
Returns to the United States in early spring. He marries Luisa Tatiana Franchetti in New York on April 20.
He works in a studio in Lexington on ten large paintings for an exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York, but the works are never shown.
After a second trip to Cuba, just after the revolution, he visits Yucatán, Mexico, and returns to Rome in June.
He rents an apartment for the summer in Sperlonga, a small white-washed fishing village on the Tyrrhenian Sea between Rome and Naples. Here Twombly draws Poems to the Sea, influenced by Mallarmé’s poetry.
In December his son, Cyrus Alessandro, is born in Rome on December 18.
Twombly lives in Rome in via Belsiana near Piazza di Spagna, where he makes sculptures. After completing three sculptures that year, he stops working in that medium until 1976. He paints The Age of Alexander on New Year’s Eve in Via Monserrato.
Twombly and his family move to the via Monserrato where he paints to Leonardo, Crimes of Passion I and II, Odeion, Sunset Series, Garden of Sudden Delight (to Hieronymus Bosch), School of Fontainebleau, Sahara and Herodiade. Around this time, he leaves for a one-month trip to the Sahara Desert.
He has a second exhibition at the Galleria La Tartaruga at the end of April.
He works on a group of drawings during July in Sant’Angelo on the island of Ischia, travelling in August to Greece and in September to Castel Gardena in the Italian Dolomites.
In October, he has his first one-person exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery.
Works for the next five years in a studio he rents in Piazza del Biscione near Campo de’ Fiori in Rome where, at that time, it was possible to find a big and inexpensive space for an artist.
That year, among other works, he paints Triumph of Galatea, Empire of Flora, and Bay of Naples. He works on the series of the five Ferragosto paintings in his Via Monserrato house, where he also paints School of Athens and Bay of Naples. June and July are spent on the Greek island of Mykonos, working on a large group of drawings titled Delian Odes. Some of these drawings are destroyed by neighbourhood children who have come to the studio drawn by curiosity in his absence. He returns to Italy and spends September in Castel Gardena in the Dolomites.
The Galleria La Tartaruga publishes a selection of works from 1954 to 1960 in the first comprehensive catalogue of Twombly’s work.
One-person exhibitions are held in October at the Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, Essen, Germany, and in November at the Galerie J in Paris.
The Paris exhibition catalogue includes an essay by Pierre Restany.
In January and February he takes a sailing trip down the Nile as far as Wadi Halfa in the Sudan. He spends the summer sailing in the Dodecanese Islands of Samos, Patmos, and Rhodes in Greece and visits the towns Ephesos and Didim along the coast of Turkey.
In the Piazza del Biscione studio he paints Birth of Venus, two versions of Leda and the Swan, Hero and Leander, Hyperion (to Keats), Second Voyage to Italy and Dutch Interior.
Visits Sicily during January and February, staying in the towns of Menfi and Selinunte on the southewestern coast of Sicily. He works on drawings from March until May in Rome. Spends the summer in Sperlonga, working on drawings.
He goes to a car rallye Rome, Paris and London; when he stops in Paris, he makes some drawings.
Returns to Rome, continues working on drawings. In December he paints a cycle of paintings in nine parts, the Nine Discourses on Commodus in the Piazza del Biscione studio.
Cy Twombly on the way to Melfi, 1963
Photo © P. Reidford
In March, at Leo Castelli Gallery in New York, Twombly exhibits Nine Discourses on Commodus, the cycle that refers to the complex psychological stages in the life and death of the emperor Commodus.
Makes another trip to Greece during the spring months.
In July and August he works on a series of drawings called Notes from a Tower in Castel Gardena, paints Ilium, the second version of School of Athens and Il Parnasso in Rome.
In the autumn he goes to Munich to prepare a show for Galerie Friedrich + Dahlem. One of the owners of the gallery is Heiner Friedrich, who later has great influence in forming the Dia Art Foundation and the Twombly Pavilion in the Menil Collection, Houston.
Twombly titles the series of paintings exhibited in Munich The Artist in the Northern Climate.
The first large museum show of Twombly’s works opens at the Museum Haus Lange in Krefeld. The exhibition is shown subsequently at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels and at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
Spends the summer traveling in Mykonos, Delos, Patmos, Samos and along the Turkish coast.
In November he works in New York at a studio on 52nd Street, where he makes a series of drawings.
On returning to New York from a visit to Lexington, Twombly exhibits drawings at the Leo Castelli Gallery. The exhibition features drawings done in New York the previous year.
Travels back to Rome by boat in the spring and starts to work on the grey paintings, the iconography of which becomes the theme of the work of the next several years.
After spending the summer in Castel Gardena and Sant’Angelo in Ischia, he returns to New York in the fall, working at the 52nd Street studio.
In January Twombly uses the loft of David Whitney at 11 Canal Street in New York to work on a second series of grey paintings.
Galleria Notizie in Turin shows the first group of grey paintings completed in Rome the year before.
Returns to Italy to spend the summer months in Castel Gardena.
In October, Leo Castelli Gallery exhibits the artist’s new grey paintings, which are seen for the first time in the United States.
Twombly spends October and November working in New York and Lexington, as well as executing a series of etchings at Tatyana Grosman of Universal Limited Art Editions in Long Island.
Twombly returns by boat to Italy on November 24th.
In January the Milwaukee Art Centre presents the first large museum show in the United States, Cy Twombly: Paintings and Drawings, which provides a comprehensive selection of Twombly’s works from 1956 to the present. His recent works receive positive critical responses.
In May Twombly takes a studio on 356 Bowery in New York, which he keeps for a number of years. There he paints the series of three Orion paintings: Synopsis of Battle, Veil of Orpheus and Treatise on the Veil.
Spends August in Castel Gardena, returning in the fall to New York to work in the Bowery studio.
In November he spends a short time on Captiva Island, Florida, at Robert Rauschenberg’s house, working on a series of collages that use motifs from Leonardo da Vinci’s studies of anatomy and weather.
Nicholas Wilder Gallery in Los Angeles shows the grey paintings from the Bowery studio in December, and Twombly travels to Los Angeles on this occasion.
From Los Angeles, Twombly travels to Mexico, visiting different archeological sites and staying in a small coast village, Yalapa, in the jungle along the Pacific coast.
Cy Twombly in his studio on 356 Bowery, New York, 1968
Returning from Mexico to New York, Twombly travels to the Caribbean Island of St. Martin, spending part of January and February in the village of Grand Case. Here he makes a series of drawings, the images of which he later develops into the paintings of the Bolsena series.
The following summer he rents an apartment in Palazzo del Drago on Bolsena Lake, north of Rome, where he paints the fourteen large paintings of the Bolsena series.
Works in New York at the Bowery studio, visits Lexington, and spends the month of March on Captiva Island.
In May, he makes a series of Untitled (Study for Treatise on the Veil) drawings in Rome. He lives in Anacapri from June to July where he continues working on drawings.
He visits Ireland in the summer, returning to Rome were he paints the second version of Treatise on the Veil in Via Monserrato.
Cy Twombly, Rome, 1969–70
Photo Ugo Mulas © Ugo Mulas Heirs. All rights reserved.
Galleria Gian Enzo Sperone in Turin shows Twombly’s new works in February.Twombly also has a show in Paris at Yvon Lambert that includes paintings and gouaches.
He spends the summer in Anacapri at the Villa Orlando, working on drawings and collages.
In the fall he works in Rome on the group of five Nini’s paintings in response to the tragic death of Nini Pirandello, the wife of his first gallerist in Rome, Plinio De Martiis.
Twombly returns to New York in November and spends the rest of the year on Captiva Island making a series of lithographs for Untitled Press.
In January three large untitled paintings are shown at Leo Castelli Gallery.
On his return to Rome in the spring, Twombly starts working on a very large canvas titled Anatomy of Melancholy in reference to the seventeenth-century book written by Robert Burton. He will finish this painting twenty-two years later in 1994 in Lexington, Virginia, and give it the new title Untitled (Say Goodbay, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor).
He spends the summer in Capri and the winter on the Captiva Island, working on drawings.
A retrospective exhibition is organized in April at the Kunsthalle of Bern, and it travels to the Lenbachhaus in Munich. At the same time, the Kunstmuseum Basel organizes a comprehensive show of drawings of the previous twenty years.
In the summer, in Castel Gardena, he completes the drawings titled 24 Short Pieces.
He travels in November to northern and central India.
Spends February on Captiva Island, then returns to Rome and works on a portfolio of ten prints titled Natural History Part I – Mushrooms.
He has gallery exhibitions in Munich, Turin, Paris and Naples.
Works during the winter in the attic of the Hotel Excelsior in Naples, preparing for a show at Galleria Lucio Amelio.
Spends the winter months on Captiva Island.
The artist purchases a fifteenth-century house in Bassano in Teverina, north of Rome, near Bomarzo, and starts its restoration, making it his summer studio for the following years.
In March a representative group of paintings, drawings and sculptures, is shown at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. The exhibition travels to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Upon his return to Rome, makes a trip to Tunisia in the spring. At the end of May, returns to Rome, working on two-large scale collages titled Mars and the Artist and Apollo and the Artist.
At the end of February, Twombly travels to Captiva Island, where he works on drawings. He has a retrospective exhibition of drawings, Cy Twombly: Dessins 1954–1976, at the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, ARC 2, in the summer.
He also completes a portfolio of prints titled Natural History Part II – Some Trees of Italy, which is exhibited at the Galerie Schellmann und Klüser, Munich, in September.
Also, in September, Leo Castelli Gallery exhibits a group of watercolors that Twombly painted in New York in May.
He spends the summer months in Rome and Bassano in Teverina.
In November, Galleria Sperone shows the large-scale works on paper, Leda & the Swan, Idilli (I am Thyris of Etna with a tuneful voice), and Narcissus.
The artist begins to work on sculptures again.
During the summer in his studio in Bassano in Teverina, Twombly finishes a large triptych-painting titled Thyrsis. Reading Alexander Pope’s translation of the Iliad inspires him to work on Fifty Days at Iliam, a monumental ten-painting cycle.
Received the Skowhegan Medal for Drawing from the Skowhegan School of Sculpture and Painting in Maine in May. During the summer in Bassano in Teverina, the cycle of ten paintings Fifty Days at Iliam is completed. The paintings are shown in November in New York at the Lone Star Foundation. The exhibition is organized by Heiner Friedrich.
That same summer, he paints Goethe in Italy and works on sculpture in Rome and Bassano in Teverina.
In the fall Heiner Bastian publishes the first monograph on Twombly’s paintings for Propyläen Verlag.
Stays in New York in March and April for the opening of a retrospective exhibition at The Whitney Museum of American Art of works created from 1954 to 1977. Roland Barthes writes the introduction to the catalogue of the Whitney retrospective.
In May, Galleria Lucio Amelio of Naples organizes the first show of Twombly’s sculptures, consisting of a selection of eleven sculptures from his work of the previous years.
In May Twombly travels from New York to Paris, where he meets Roland Barthes. Yvon Lambert publishes the first volume (VI) of the Catalogue Raisonné of Twombly’s drawings with a new essay by Barthes.
He works in Bassano in June and July and travels in the fall to Russia, Central Asia and Afghanistan. He spends the months of December and January 1980 on the Caribbean islands of the Iles des Saintes and Antigua working on watercolors.
An exhibition of paintings is held in Cologne at the Galerie Karsten Greve.
Cy at Iles-Des-Saintes, 1979. Courtesy Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio
Participates in the 39t Venice Biennale with a cycle of drawings made in Rome in the spring titled Five Days Wait at Jiayuguan.
Gabriele Stocchi publishes a monograph on this series. Twombly works on a series of sculptures in July and August at his Bassano studio, then travels to Greece in September.
Works on drawings and sculptures in a studio that he rents in late spring in Formia on the Gulf of Gaeta. In Bassano that summer he prepares for a show of works on paper that will take place the following year at Sperone Westwater Fischer Gallery in New York.
In September he starts work on Hero and Leandro, a painting in four parts.
The first museum show of his sculptures, consisting of twenty-three works from 1958 to 1981, opens at the Museum Haus Lange in Krefeld. A catalogue is published with an essay by Marianne Stockebrand.
An exhibition of works on paper from 1954 to 1976 is held at Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, California, which then travels the following year to the Elvehjem Museum of Art, Madison; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; and to the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.
He travels to the Greek island of Samos in September and returns to Rome where he paints the three large Bacchus works.
He spends time in New York and Lexington, where he works on a series of gouache drawings called Notes from Silverwood.
He works in Bassano, beginning on the Naxos, Suma, Lycian and Nymphidia drawings.
Shows paintings and four new scultpures at Documenta 7 in Kassel from June to September.
Travels to Key West, where he works on drawings such as Pseudo Protea. Returns to Rome via New York in late March. Works in Gaeta during the spring.
He travels to Yemen with his son Alessandro in June and works on the Anabasis series during August in Bassano in Teverina.
He concentrates on sculptures at the studio in Via Monserrato, Rome.
During the winter in Key West, he completes a set of drawings called Proteus. Has an exhibition at Galerie Karsten Greve in Cologne in January which travels on to Mayor Gallery, London, and Galerie Ulysses, Vienna, in the spring.
In May the Musée d’Art contemporain of Bordeaux inaugurates an exhibition of Twombly’s works on paper. He remains in Gaeta and continues to work on sculpture.
In the summer months he works in Bassano on three-part painting Hero and Leander.
In Septemeber the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden presents a large retrospective exhibition of paintings and drawings. Organized by Katharina Schmidt, it focuses on mythological themes in his work.
At the same time, Twombly receives from the State government of Baden-Württemberg the “Internationaler Preis für bildende Kunst des Landes Baden-Württemberg”.
In October a show of his sculptures opens in Rome at the Galleria Sperone.
Spends the winter months in Egypt in Luxor.
In the spring he stays in Gaeta, working on sculptures.
In the summer Twombly works in Bassano, where he works on a second version of Hero and Leandro (to Christopher Marlowe).
The large series titled Analysis of the Rose as Sentimental Despair is also painted there. It is a five-part painting based on fragments of poems by Rilke, Rumi and Giacomo Leopardi.
The rest of the year is spent in Gaeta, using the house of a friend to work on sculptures. At the same time he purchases a house on a hillside, overlooking the harbour of Gaeta. He restores and expands the house and uses it as a studio in the following years.
Twombly spends the spring and winter months in his new house in Gaeta. The retrospective exhibition Cy Twombly: Drawings, Collages and Paintings on Paper: 1955–1985, opens at the Larry Gagosian Gallery in February.
He works in Bassano on a number of “paintings in two parts” and on a series of four untitled landscape paintings. He designs and supervises the painting of the stage curtain for the Opéra Bastille in Paris.
He lives in Gaeta during the fall and winter, supervising the restoration of the house and the creation of a garden of lemon trees, conceived as a collection of garden rooms.
Harald Szeemann organizes a large retrospective of Twombly’s work, including paintings, sculptures and drawings at the Kunsthaus Zurich. The exhibition travels to the Palacio de Velàzquez / Palacio de Cristal, Madrid; the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; the Städtische Kunsthalle, Dusseldorf; and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
An exhibition of works on paper, organized by Katharina Schmidt, opens at the Stadtisches Kunstmuseum Bonn in June and travels to the Centre Cultural de la Fundació Caixa de Pensions, Bercelona, in November.
Twombly works on sculptures in the summer in Bassano, in particular on a commissioned sculpture of Victory for a square in Paris, a project that was never realized.
He is elected a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in New York, and the city of Siegen in Germany awards him the Rubens Prize on the occasion of an exhibition at the Städtische Galerie Haus Seel.
In September and October the Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London, holds an exhibition of paintings and works on paper, including the North African Sktechbook drawn in 1953 during his trip to North Africa.
The artist spends the fall and winter in Gaeta and works on sculpture.
Twombly works in the spring in Gaeta on two large paintings on paper called Venere Sopra Gaeta, which are shown in Naples at the Galleria Lucio Amelio. One of these now exists as two fragments.
The Dia Art Foundation in Bridgehampton, New York, shows Poems to the Sea in May and June.
He works on sculptures in Gaeta and in Rome and on a cycle of nine green paintings conceived to be displayed together in one room. The cycle is later shown at the 43nd Venice Biennale. Now they are permanently on display at the Cy Twombly gallery at the Menil Collection in Houston.
Twombly receives the “Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres” from the French government.
He spends the fall in the United States and the winter in Gaeta.
In February an exhibition of Twombly’s early paintings and sculptures from 1951 to 1953 opens in New York at the Sperone Westwater Gallery.
In September the Menil Collection in Houston inaugurates a large exhibition of paintings, drawings and sculptures. The exhibition travels to the Des Moines Art Center in April 1990.
In October the large work of ten paintings Fifty Days at Iliam is acquired and installed in a special room at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Twombly spends the month of October in the Seychelles.
In December, Gagosian Gallery in New York assembles a show featuring eight of the fourteen Untitled (Bolsena) paintings from 1969, exhibiting them together for the first time.
Twombly travels to Instanbul for Christmas.
Return to the Seychelles to spend the month of January and February, first on the Island of La Digue, then on D’Arros Island, where he works on a series of drawings.
He spends the spring in Gaeta working on drawings. Two series of drawings were shown with the 1989 drawings and a selection of sculptures in Zurich at the Thomas Ammann Fine Art AG that summer. Souvenirs of D’Arros and Gaeta edited by Thomas Ammann was published later in 1992.
Twombly travels in March to Zurich, Paris and Madrid. In April he receives the 44th Annual Skowhegan Medal for Painting.
In Gaeta he paints works titled Summer Madness, finishing them in August in Bassano. In both places, he works on sculpture in spring and autumn.
He spends December in Sorrento.
In Gaeta he works on sculptures, including Thermopylae which is shown in Paris at the Galerie Pièce-Unique later that fall.
During the summer, he retraces the poet Lord Byron’s itinerary in Greece as far as Epirus, and travels further to the island of Syros.
He starts to work in July in Bassano on the two sets of the Quattro Stagioni.
Volume VII of the Catalogue Raisonné of Drawings 1977–1982 is published by Yvon Lambert with an essay by Philip Sollers.
He works on sculptures in Gaeta in the fall.
The Kunsthaus Zürich dedicates a space in the museum to the permanent display of ten of his sculptures.
Spends the beginning of the year on Jupiter Island, Florida, where he works on sixteen sculptures. He returns for the summer to Gaeta to complete a three-panel painting using the motif of sea and boats, which will become a recurrent subject for his work.
The first volume of the Catalogue Raisonné of Twombly’s Paintings, by Heiner Bastian, is published in the fall. In the following years, other volumes of the Catalogue Raisonné covering the entire production of paintings will be published with essays by Heiner Bastian.
Spends the beginning of the year on Jupiter Island. In the spring, nostalgic for his hometown of Lexington, he takes a house in Lexington, where he will spend the spring and the fall regularly over the next years.
He works during the summer in Gaeta finishing Autunno and Inverno of the first set of the Quattro Stagioni.
In October his first exhibition of photographs opens in New York at the Matthew Marks Gallery.
He receives an honorary doctoral degree from Washington and Lee University, Lexington, in the fall.
The artist resides in Lexington in the winter and in Gaeta in the spring and summer where he completes the first set of Quattro Stagioni and some sculptures.
On returning to Lexington in the fall, he rents an empty warehouse where he finishes the large painting he had begun in Rome twenty-two years earlier: Untitled (Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor). In September, Gagosian Gallery in New York shows the three-panel painting Untitled (Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor) for the first time, although at this stage, it is called Untitled Painting.
In September a major retrospective of Twombly’s paintings, drawings and sculptures, organized by Kirk Varnedoe, opens in New York at The Museum of Modern Art. The show travels to the Menil Collection in Houston, to the Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles; and to Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie.
After his return to Italy, he travels in early November to Munich, Berlin, Prague and Paris. Twombly works on and completes the second version of the Quattro Stagioni in Gaeta.
Untitled (Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor) is shown at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Twombly travels to Houston in February for the opening of the second venue of the Museum of Modern Art retrospective and for the inauguration of the Cy Twombly Gallery, a museum founded by the Menil family, sponsored by Philippa and Heiner Friedrich and curated by Paul Winkler. Renzo Piano designs the museum based on plans made together with the artist. The museum is a permanent installation of paintings, sculptures, and works on paper from 1954 to the present. At the same time, a show of photographs by Twombly and a drawing show are held at two different galleries in Houston. Twombly spends the spring in Lexington and the summer in Gaeta, where he gives the last touch to the second version of the set Quattro Stagioni without changing the date of execution. He receives the “Kaiserring” award from the city of Goslar, Germany. Twombly travels to Berlin in August for the last venue of his retrospective, visits St. Petersburg, and then returns to Italy.
Cy Twombly, Gaeta, 1995. Photo © François Halard
After spending the winter in Lexington, he travels to Paris in June. In the summer in Gaeta, he works on sculptures and three sets of monoprints, portraying for the first time, motifs influenced by the Battle of Lepanto, which are shown in December in New York at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
In May Twombly is included in the exhibition L’informe: Mode d’emploi, organized by Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss, at Centre Pompidou, Paris, which is structured around the theories of Georges Battaille. In the same month, Cy Twombly: Photographs opens at the Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles.
He travels to Japan in October to receive the “Praemium Imperiale”.
He spends the winter in Lexington and on St. Barthélémy in the Caribbean.
Spends the winter months in St. Barthélémy, spring in Lexington and the summer in Gaeta. A one-person exhibition opens at Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne.
In November, his first one-person sculpture exhibition in the United States, Cy Twombly: Ten Sculptures opens at the Gagosian Gallery, New York, on the occasion of the publication of the Catalogue Raisonné of Sculpture by Nicola Del Roscio.
The artist spends the winter in Lexington, where he concentrates on sculpture.
In May he exhibits eight sculptures at the American Academy in Rome.
He travels in Iran and spends some time staying in Isfahan in May. In Gaeta he paints Three Studies for the Temeraire, now in the collection of the Art Gallery in New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. It is a new interpretation of J.M.W. Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire and is made for the group exhibition Encounters: New Art From Old, organized by the National Gallery, London, to open in 2000.
Twombly works on sculptures in Bassano in Teverina and Gaeta in August, and he spends the autumn months and winter in Lexington. December in St. Barthélémy.
In March Twombly returns to Gaeta via Basel, where the retrospective exhibition of sixty-six sculptures made between 1948 and 1998, Cy Twombly: The Sculpture, opens in April at the Kunstmuseum Basel. The exhibition is curated by Katharina Schmidt in collaboration with Paul Winkler and is presented over the following year at the Menil Collection, Houston, and the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.
In the summer Three Studies for the Temeraire is shown alongside the Turner painting at the National Gallery, London.
The series Coronation of Sesostris is shown at the Gagosian Gallery from November to January 2001. The ancient legendary Egyptian king, as well as the myth of the sun god Ra, inspires Coronation of Sesostris.
Spends winter months in the Caribbean.
Spring in Lexington where he works in a small studio on sculptures, photographs and the series of Lepanto paintings, which are presented at the 49th Venice Biennale where he is awarded the Golden Lion. For lack of space, he works on a panel and nails another panel atop of the previously finished one. The Lepanto paintings depict the sea battle waged by the Holy League against the Ottoman Empire in the Strait of Lepanto.
At the same time, ten untitled paintings and sculptures are shown at the Thomas Ammann Fine Arts AG, Zurich.
During the summer and autumn, Twombly works on paintings, sculptures and photography.
In the winter he receives the “Premio Constantino Nivola” for sculpture. In January the Gagosian Gallery, New York, exhibits the Lepanto paintings, which are exhibited again at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich in the autumn. He returns to Lexington, where he works mainly on sculptures and photography. He travels to receive the “Julio González Prize” in Valencia, Spain, with Laudatio on occasion of the award by Katarina Schmidt.
The exhibition Audible Silence: Cy Twombly opens in Zurich in May with sculptures and drawings from the Daros Collection.
In the summer Twombly works on paintings and sculptures.
A one-person works-on-paper exhibition opens at Inverleith House, Royal Botanical Garden, Edinburgh. Twombly receives the “Bank of Scotland Herald Angels 2002 Award”. The first comprehensive catalogue of photographic work, Cy Twombly Photographs 1951–1999 edited by Nicola Del Roscio is published in the fall.
He spends part of the winter in St. Barthélémy, returning in the spring to Lexington where he paints the series A Gathering of Time, which is shown at the Gagosian Gallery in New York in May.
Travels in July to St. Petersburg in Russia where, on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the founding of the city, the State Hermitage Museum presents Cy Twombly at the Hermitage: Fifty Years of Works on Paper, curated by Julie Sylvester. The retrospective exhibition travels to the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Pinakothec der Moderne in Munich in October. Twombly spends most of the summer and autumn in Gaeta working on sculptures. Spends the winter in the Seychelles.
He spends part of the winter in the Seychelles.
Cy Twombly at the Hermitage: Fifty Years of Works on Paper, curated by Julie Sylvester, travels to Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, in January and to the Serpentine Gallery in London in April, and Twombly is present on both occasions.
Returns to Gaeta. Works on ten paintings that are later shown in London on occasion of the opening of the new Gagosian Gallery in May.
Exhibition at the Thomas Ammann Fine Art AG, Zurich, in June.
Fall in Lexington, working on photography.
During winter, he works in Gaeta on the Bacchus series of paintings which are shown in November at the Gagosian Gallery, New York. The Hermitage drawing retrospective, Cy Twombly: Fifty Years of Works on Paper, travels to the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in January and to the Menil Collection, Houston, in May. The Lepanto paintings are shown simultaneously at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
During spring, an archive of the drawings is established by Nicola Del Roscio in Rome.
He stays in Lexington, working on sculptures for the rest of the year.
The show titled Bacchus, Psilax, Mainomenos opens at the Gagosian Gallery, New York.
Twombly spends January, February and March on the island of La Digue, Seychelles.
Spring months are spent in Gaeta where he works mainly on sculptures.
In April an exhibition of recent sculptures made in Lexington in previous years is shown at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.
In May he receives the McKim Prize at the American Academy in Rome. He spends the summer in Syros, Greece.
He works on a new group of paintings and photographs in the autumn in Lexington.
In late November he returns to Gaeta where he starts a new series of paintings, Blooming: A Scattering of Blossoms and Other Things, based on Japanese haiku on the peony.
Spends the first part of the year in Lexington and Boston, where he works on photography.
Returns to Gaeta, where he finishes the series Blooming paintings, which are exhibited in June at the Musée d’art contemporain, Collection Lambert in Avignon.
Also in June he shows the group of paintings done in Lexington in the autumn 2006 at the Thomas Ammann Fine Art AG on occasion of its 30th anniversary.
The artist spends July and August in Abruzzi and Gaeta working on photographs.
Twombly travels to Paris to prepare the project of the ceiling painting for the Salle de Bronze, Musée Louvre. Returns to Lexington and remains until November.
For the rest of the year, he stays in Gaeta.
The Blooming paintings are shown at the Gagosian Gallery, New York in November.
The Gagosian Gallery inaugurates a new space in Rome in December with an exhibition of the artist’s Three Notes from Salalah, which is executed in Lexington.
In March he makes trips to Maastricht and San Moritz.
He travels to Paris to continue work on the Louvre ceiling project.
In June the Tate Modern retrospective Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons opens; the exhibition will travel to the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, and the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome. He travels to London for its inauguration and then to Madrid, where an exhibition of the Lepanto paintings opens at the Museo Nacional del Prado.
In July the artist spends time between Gaeta and Abruzzi, where he takes photographs.
His first one-person museum show of photographs opens in September at Huis Marseilles, Amsterdam. He travels to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, in October for the opening of the second venue of the Tate Modern retrospective. During November, in Gaeta, the artist works on the Rose paintings for the Museum Brandhorst.
In late winter he works on photography and sculptures in Lexington. The last venue of the Tate Modern retrospective at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome, opens. He returns to Lexington after the opening, and there he begins work on Leaving Paphos Ringed with Waves.
Twombly travels to Chicago for the exhibition Cy Twombly: Natural World, Selected Works 2000–2007 on the occasion of the inauguration of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Modern Wing designed by Renzo Piano. He travels to Munich for the opening of the Museum Brandhorst via New York where the Lepanto paintings are installed permanently in the museum. In June he travels to Vienna for the opening of the exhibition Sensation of the Moment at Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna.
He spends August between Abruzzi and Gaeta.
In late September the artist travels to Athens for the opening exhibition of the Paphos paintings at the new Gagosian Gallery.
He travels to Lexington from Athens. In late October Cy Twombly: Treatise of Veil opens at the Menil Collection, Houston.
Receives the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture in March.
Travels to Paris to oversee the Louvre ceiling. In spring he works on photography in Munich, where an exhibition opens during the summer months at the Schirmer/Mosel Showroom.
Attends the inauguration of the ceiling of the Salles des Bronzes at the Louvre and receives the Légion d’honneur.
Spends the months of July in Abruzzi.
Finishes a group of five paintings titled Camino Real which are shown for the inauguration of the Gagosian Gallery in Paris in April. Spends winter between Lexington, St. Barthélémy, and Gaeta working on photography and his Catalogues Raisonnés with Nicola Del Roscio.
Works on eight paintings Untitled (Camino Real) during the month of March, assisted by Viorel Grasu and Nicola Del Roscio.
The Museum Brandhorst in Munich dedicates a special exhibition to his photographic work in April. The exhibition continues to the Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Siegen, and travels to the BOZAR – Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels – in February 2012.
In June a show dedicated to Twombly and Poussin opens at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London.
Cy Twombly dies on July 5th in Rome.