559 - Cy Twombly* (Lexington 1928 - 2011 Rome)

Cy Twombly* (Lexington 1928 - 2011 Rome) Untitled, 1970 offset lithograph/paper 21 x 42 cm verso monogrammed CT, numbered 195/250 SCHÄTZPREIS / ESTIMATE € 2000 - 4000 STARTPREIS / STARTING PRICE € 2000 Cy Twombly—born Edwin Parker Twombly—was a significant American painter, draftsman, and sculptor. Following his studies in Boston, New York, and at Black Mountain College, he developed a distinctive visual language from the 1950s onwards that straddled the realms of Abstract Expressionism, Lyrical Abstraction, and gestural painting. His works on canvas and paper combine expressive scribbles, calligraphic lines, textual fragments, overpainting, scratch marks, and paint splatters into a poetic, seemingly spontaneous world of signs. Alongside Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, Twombly ranks among the defining figures of post-war American art. His body of work fuses Action Painting, Art Informel, and poetic painting with an intense dialogue with European art history. Classical antiquity—specifically Greek and Roman mythology, Homer (the Iliad and the Odyssey), and Mediterranean culture—serves as a recurring point of reference. Themes such as memory, time and transience, nature, Eros, violence, and spirituality find expression in a style of painting where line, movement, color, and script intertwine. His characteristic use of materials is defined by the employment of pencil, wax crayon, and oil paint, alongside techniques like dripping and the immediate gestural mark. Art-historical references range from Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, and Paul Klee—through Jean Dubuffet and Alberto Giacometti—to the subsequent generations of Neo-Expressionism. PLEASE NOTE: The purchase price consists of the highest bid plus the buyer's premium, sales tax and, if applicable, the fee of artists resale rights and platform fee. In the case of normal taxation (marked ° at the estimate), a premium of 24% is added to the highest bid. The mandatory sales tax is added to the sum of the highest bid, the buyer's premium and platform fee. This amounts to 13% for paintings, drawings, graphic works and sculptures and 20% for photographs and all other items. The buyer's premium amounts to 28% in case of differential taxation. The sales tax is included in the differential taxation.