(Lexington, Virginia 1928–2011 Rome)
Untitled, 1963/1964, signed Cy Twombly, colored pencil, wax crayon on paper, 86 x 67 cm, framed

Provenance:
Galleria La Tartaruga, Rome
Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne
Private Collection, Germany
Kunsthaus Lempertz, 3 December 2016, lot 450 - acquired there by the present owner

Literature:
Nicola Del Roscio, Cy Twombly, drawings, catalogue raisonné, Gagosian Gallery, New York (Ed.), Munich 2011, vol. 4, no. 20

Cy Twombly occupies a unique position among US artists. Twombly lived and worked in Italy, far from the American art world, and felt free to experiment. In Rome, Twombly refined his distinctive artistic language. Twombly's visual language is informed by classical literature, ancient history, poetry and mythology, as well as his own life experience. Since the 1950s, Twombly's drawings have been dominated by rhythmically repeated line progressions, swirls, dense tangles and isolated numbers. Pencil, coloured pens and ballpoint pens enabled Twombly to make this 'scriptural' drawing, which ultimately includes the signature of the artist himself. On the white of the paper, the pictorial elements provoke by appearing as scribbles, appearing as if randomly distributed on the surface.

The untitled work offered here is a vivid example of Twombly's unique pictorial language. The pictorial elements merge into an abstract composition that is both delicate and dynamic. The work was created in Italy between 1963-64. Twombly lived in a 17th-century palazzo on Via di Monserrato in Rome at the time the work was created. Untitled is emblematic of the groundbreaking work Twombly produced in the 1960s, widely regarded as a critical and highly fruitful period in his long and illustrious career.

“Paint is something that I use with my hands and do all those tactile things. I really don’t like oil because you can’t get back into it, or you make a mess. It’s not my favourite thing... pencil is more my medium than wet paint.”
Cy Twombly