21 July 2015
Welcome to paradise on earth, that is to the art of Cy Twombly. This is the invitation and at the same time the promise made by the curators Julie Sylvester and Philip Larratt-Smith to those who enter the beautiful rooms of Ca’ Pesaro to see the monographic exhibition devoted to the American painter and sculptor. The interpretation that Paradise—open until September 13—gives to the prolific work of Cy Twombly, alias Edwin Parker Twombly Jr., is linked to love in all its forms—erotic, intellectual, platonic and romantic—for culture and for life. It is passion that animates the paintings, sculptures and drawings of the artist, who died in Rome in 2011, at the age of 83. As well as in his native Lexington, Virginia, Twombly studied art in Chicago and New York, where he met Robert Rauschenberg, who encouraged him to attend Black Mountain College in North Carolina. There Twombly found Jasper Johns and John Cage, who both proved fundamental to the development of his artistic personality, so extraneous to the dominant canons of the postwar period and the principal artistic currents of the 20th century. Paradise presents the long creative adventure of the artist: from the paintings on wood of the early fifties—which his detractors dismissed as being influenced by the obscenities scribbled on the walls of public toilets—to the large panels with a gray, brown or white ground of the late sixties, on which the artist traced lines resembling words written in italics (probably a legacy of his cryptographic work in the army). The route through the exhibition continues with the works of the eighties, inspired by poetry, mythology and the classical tradition, before concluding with the very last works created in 2011: yellow, red and orange gestural circles on a bright green ground. The exhibition encapsulates sixty years of ideas and emotions that the artist translated into a language with a high degree of abstraction, fusing painting, drawing and writing in a unique way.
Cy Twombly, Paradise
A cura di Julie Sylvester e Philip Larratt-Smith
Ca’ Pesaro, Venezia
6 maggio — 13 settembre 2015
© Cy Twombly Foundation. Photo by Andrea Sarti/CAST1466
© Cy Twombly Foundation. Photo by Andrea Sarti/CAST1466
© Cy Twombly Foundation. Photo by Andrea Sarti/CAST1466
Cy Twombly, Untitled, 1971. Courtesy: Cy Twombly Foundation.
Cy Twombly, Untitled, 1971. Courtesy: Cy Twombly Foundation.
Cy Twombly, Untitled, 1951. Courtesy: Cy Twombly Foundation.
Cy Twombly, Untitled (New York City), 1968. Collezione privata. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery.
Cy Twombly, Paesaggio, 1986. Courtesy: Cy Twombly Foundation.
Cy Twombly, Untitled (Camino Real VI), 2011. Courtesy: Cy Twombly Foundation.
Cy Twombly, Turkish Delight, 2000. Courtesy: Cy Twombly Foundation.
Cy Twombly, Untitled, 1992. Courtesy: Cy Twombly Foundation.