Cy Twombly

b. 1942

Edward Parker (Cy) Twombly is an American artist born in 1928. His art is influenced by his surroundings and art history. The large-scale canvases and paper laid on canvas often take the form of freely scribbled, graffiti-like paintings on solid mundane color backgrounds blurring the line between paintings and drawings. His work is an amalgam of Romantic symbolism, infused with the graffiti and primitive resourcefulness of the French New Realists and references to ancient Roman walls. His work has received international attention and is collected and displayed in many contemporary museums.

Twombly studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Art, Boston and Washington and Lee University until he moved to New York in 1950 and began studying at the Art Students League of New York where he met Robert Rauschenberg. Rauschenberg ultimately convinced Twombly to attend the Black Mountain College, where a burgeoning artistic community was taking form in this Asheville, North Carolina location. While at Black Mountain College he also met Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Ben Shahn and the composer John Cage. The exchange of ideas with these artists, especially the gestural expressionism of Kline and Motherwell, was augmented by Paul Klee’s imagery.

In 1953 he left for the army and served as a cryptologist, clearly influencing the new direction of his paintings. His artwork continued to become more abstract and he settled in Rome, Italy, where his production of work incorporated numerous of the artistic themes he had been exposed to. Twombly has been well received in both the world of art historians and the art market.

Valdés has received various awards, including the Lissone and Biella in Milan in 1965; the silver medal in the second International Prints Biennial in Tokyo; an award from the Bridgestone Art Museum in Lisbon; the Alfons Roig Award in Valencia; the National Award for the Fine Arts in Spain; a medal from the biennial International Festival of the Plastic Arts in Baghdad; and in 1993 the Medal of the Order of Andrés Bello in Venezuela.