Cy Twombly - Editions & Works on Paper New York Tuesday, April 24, 2018 | Phillips

Editions & Works on Paper

New York Auction 24 April 2018

  • Literature

    Heiner Bastian 45

  • Artist Biography

    Cy Twombly

    American • 1928 - 2011

    Cy Twombly emerged in the mid-1950s alongside New York artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. While at first developing a graffiti-like style influenced by Abstract Expressionist automatism–having notably studied under Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell at the legendary Black Mountain College between 1951 and 1952–Twombly was a prominent figure in the new generation of artists that challenged the abstract orthodoxy of the New York School. Twombly developed a highly unique pictorial language that found its purest expression upon his life-defining move to Rome in 1957. Simultaneously invoking classical history, poetry, mythology and his own contemporary lived experience, Twombly's visual idiom is distinguished by a remarkable vocabulary of signs and marks and the fusion of word and text. 

    Cy Twombly produced graffiti-like paintings that were inspired by the work of Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Robert Motherwell. His gestural forms of lines, drips and splattering were at first not well-received, but the artist later became known as the leader of the estrangement from the Abstract Expressionism movement. Full of energy and rawness, Twombly's pieces are reminiscent of childhood sketches and reveal his inspiration from mythology and poetry.

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45

Cy Twombly

Natural History Part I Mushrooms: No. IV

1974
Lithograph with collotype in colors with collage and touches of hand-coloring, on Rives Couronne paper, the full sheet.
S. 29 7/8 x 22 in. (75.9 x 55.9 cm)
Signed with initials and numbered 94/98 in pencil (there were also 17 artist's proofs), published by Propyläen Verlag, Berlin, framed.

Estimate
$7,000 - 10,000 

Sold for $18,750

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Editions & Works on Paper

New York Auction 24 April 2018