Cy Twombly

i)

Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne

Sammlung Marx, Berlin

Thomas Ammann Fine Art, Zurich

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1995

ii)

Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne

Sammlung Marx, Berlin

Thomas Ammann Fine Art, Zurich

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1995

iii)

Sammlung Marx, Berlin

Thomas Ammann Fine Art, Zurich

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1995

iv)

Sammlung Marx, Berlin

Thomas Ammann Fine Art, Zurich

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1995

Cologne, Galerie Karsten Greve, Cy Twombly: Bilder und Zeichnungen, 1975

Hanover, Kestner-Gesellschaft Hannover, Cy Twombly, 1976, iii) p. 61, no. 10, illustrated; iv) p. 79, no. 9, illustrated

Paris, Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris, Cy Twombly: Dessins 1954-1976, 1976, iii) n.p., no. 79 (text); iv) n.p., no. 80 (text)

Berlin, Nationalgalerie; and Mönchengladbach, Städtisches Museum Abteiberg, Joseph Beuys, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol: Sammlung Marx, 1982, pp. 152-53, no. 88-91, illustrated in colour

Bordeaux, Musée d’art contemporain, Cy Twombly: Oeuvres de 1973-1983, 1984, i) p. 17, illustrated in colour; ii) p. 59 (text); iii) p. 16, illustrated in colour; iv) p. 15, illustrated in colour

Baden-Baden, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Cy Twombly, 1984, i) p. 154, no. 31 (text), (incorrectly titled); ii) p. 155, no. 32 (text), (incorrectly titled); iii) p. 99, no. 30, illustrated in colour, (incorrectly titled); iv) p. 98, no. 29, illustrated in colour, (incorrectly titled) 

Bonn, Städtisches Kunstmuseum Bonn, Cy Twombly: Serien auf Papier 1957-1987, 1987, pp. 91-94, no. 6, illustrated in colour, (incorrectly titled)

Barcelona, Centre Cultural de la Fundació Caixa de Pensions, Cy Twombly: sèries sobre paper, 1959-1987, 1987-88, pp. 85-88, no. V, illustrated in colour, (incorrectly titled)

Vienna, Kunsthalle Wien; and Frankfurt, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Die Sprache der Kunst, 1993, p. 36, no. 25, illustrated in colour

Zurich, Thomas Ammann, Cy Twombly, 1994

London, Tate Gallery; Tübingen, Kunsthalle Tübingen; Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart; Hamburg, Deichtorhallen Hamburg; and Vienna, Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien, Stiftung Froehlich: Sammlungsblöcke, 1996-97, pp. 188-89, no. 254-57, illustrated in colour

Karlsruhe, Museum für Neue Kunst im ZKM Karlsruhe, Eröffnung des Museums für Neue Kunst, 1999-2000

Karlsruhe, Museum für Neue Kunst im ZKM, on loan to the collection, 2001-04

Berlin, Galerie Heiner Bastian, Cy Twombly – A Mediterranean World, 2012

Yvon Lambert, Catalogue raisonné des œuvres sur papier de Cy Twombly, Vol VI, 1973-1976, Milan 1979, i) p. 80, no. 56, illustrated in colour; ii) p. 80, no. 55, illustrated in colour; iii)  p. 77, no. 51, illustrated in colour; iv) p. 78, no. 52, illustrated in colour

Anon, Künstler  – Kritisches Lexikon der Gegenwartskunst, Munich 1988, p. 9, no. 7-10, illustrated  

Ruth Langenberg, Cy Twombly. Eine Chronologie gestalteter Zeit, Munich1997, p. 240, no. 14, illustrated

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is brighter and more vibrant in the original and the illustration fails to convey the texture of the thick paint in places. (i) Condition: This is work is in very good condition. The sheet is hinged to the backing board in several places. Further inspection reveals a speck of loss to an area of thick paint underneath the 'G'. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light. (ii) Condition: This work is in very good condition. The sheet is hinged verso to the backing board in several places.There is some minor compression to the impasto peak at the centre of the left with an associated minute loss. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light. (iii) Condition: This work is in very good condition. The sheet is hinged verso to the backing board in several places. There is some unobtrusive handling marks to the top right corner and a minute speck of media accretion towards the centre of the top edge. (iv) Condition: This work is in very good condition. The sheet is hinged verso to the backing board in several places. There is some minor compression to a few of the impasto peaks and a few unobtrusive hairline drying cracks to the thicker areas of paint. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

“For through the empty vast, by firm decree,
How first the pregnant seeds of earth and air,
Seas and etherial fire were gather'd there”

Extract from Virgil’s Eclogue the Sixth. Silenus, in: Samuel Palmer, The Eclogues of Virgil. An English Version, London 1883, p. 62.

 

The illustrious suite of drawings titled Virgil are seminal in Cy Twombly’s oeuvre as they mark the beginning of his primary focus on the graphic quality of script without any additional compositional support. The letters of one of the greatest Latin poets are sprawled across each sheet in different angles, sizes, and intensity as they are encapsulated by a sea of whiteness. Created in Italy in 1973, the purity of the background recalls Twombly’s own impressions: “The Mediterranean… is always just white, white, white” (Cy Twombly in conversation with David Sylvester in: David Sylvester, Interviews with American Artists, London 2001, p. 175). The suite of eight drawings, of which four are presented here, is a powerful annunciation of Twombly’s return to decipherable writing and reinvigorates his life-long obsession with the pillars of antique Roman culture as a perennial source of inspiration. After the famed Blackboard Paintings of 1966-71, in Virgil Twombly returns to the literal word as a transmitter of cultural meaning, celebrating the semiotic power of language by liberating the picture plane of any ornamental encumbrance. Suffused with intellectual sophistication, these drawings establish a complex juxtaposition between the written word in its function as a cultural signifier, and the abstract, almost monochrome void surrounding the letters. Twombly’s aesthetic sensitivity is discernible in each singular drawing as the compositional range of the letters extends from grand gesture to subtle inscription. The sublimeness of each line recalls Roland Barthes dictum on Twombly’s script as inhabiting the “allusive field of writing” (Roland Barthes, The Responsibility of Forms, Berkeley 1985, p. 158).

Reduced in appearance to the very essence of a name, the present corpus is a sensuous exploration of ancient humanistic culture through the lens of the famous Roman poet Virgil. Ultimately however, this sequence of drawings refers back and reprises certain themes related to Twombly’s earlier work. Virgil’s finest achievement is considered to be the Aeneid, an epic masterpiece consisting of twelve books written in dactylic hexameter verse that describes the journey of Aeneas, the Trojan hero who was the son of prince Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite (Venus in Roman mythology) and later became one of the progenitors of the city of Rome – the city that Twombly moved to in 1957. In its literary composition, the Aeneid is strongly associated with the poetry of Homer’s Odyssey and Illiad. Indeed, both Virgil and Homer, but also the gods and mystics of ancient Greek and Roman literature, are recurring key figures in Twombly’s work. Immersed in the rich mythology of these bygone civilisations, Twombly envisioned some of his greatest masterpieces. Where the name Virgil first appears on canvas in an eponymous work of 1963 and where the drawing Aeneas from 1975 is a direct reference to Virgil’s Aeneid, the Virgil suite of 1973 represents the ultimate manifestation of Twombly’s admiration for one of the most distinguished poets of ancient European culture. In its distinctive and austere purity, these drawings evoke art historian Heiner Bastian’s thoughts on the associative and metaphorical force of Twombly’s works: “Twombly sees the object and the sign that stands for it as a simultaneous unity that arises in the act of drawing“ (Heiner Bastian, Cy Twombly: Paintings 1952-1976, Vol. I, Berlin 1978, p. 41).

Repeated on each sheet, the name of Virgil is written as if Twombly was attempting to preserve a sudden epiphany. The fugitive traces of undulant pencil lines are set against a white, vast ground with some of the drawings revealing scratches, smears, and marks of effacement. The attempt to erase or brush-off some of the letters is contrasted by the intensity of other letters that solemnly resist disappearing in the vastness of the surface. Virgil is almost a melancholic testament to an antique culture, seemingly anachronistic but whose fragments are still firmly embedded in our own cultural and historic memory. While the repetition of the same name is reminiscent of the automatism that guided Twombly’s Blackboard Paintings, the variety in different script type attests to the individuality of the idiosyncratic handwriting in each drawing. Ranging from small to large, from elusive to bold, from several contours to strict command of line, and from block to cursive writing, each letter is transformed into an aesthetic celebration of the written word. As such, Twombly’s writing is fully autonomous and creates its own self-referential visual cosmos that transcends literal meaning. Art historian Richard Schiff aptly reflects on Twombly’s script: “This writing is distinctively personal and quite irregular, as if the habit of Twombly’s hand was to escape habit. Why does he write? My guess is that handwriting concretises and re-animates forces of intellect and emotion – hence, ideas and feelings – that might otherwise evade his grasp…. Twombly writes as if he were seeking out the meaning of the poetic words through the physical act of producing their graphic signs. The word as disembodied sign becomes the word as embodied mark, imbued with the spirit of a gesture and located in a particular place and time” (Richard Schiff, ‘Charm’, in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, Tate Modern, Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons, 2008, p. 26).

With its purposeful use of blank space and careful placement of words, allowing multiple non-linear readings, Virgil reveals a strong poetic, aesthetic, and conceptual kinship with the works of the French poet Stéphane Mallarmé, one of Twombly’s great influences. Mallarmé was a leading symbolist poet, emphasising the syntax, spacing, semantics, etymology, and even individual letters in his work. This considered orchestration of words is deftly reflected in the Virgil suite, in which the letters and the white ground interact in spatially ambiguous ways. As Twombly once said, “whiteness can be the classic state of the intellect, or a neo-romantic area of remembrance – or as the symbolic whiteness of Mallarmé” (Cy Twombly quoted in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, Tate Modern, op. cit., p. 73). In its formal reduction, the Virgil suite is a masterful display of Twombly’s conceptual and compositional puissance. These drawings are poetic visions evoking the idea of the disegno, which during the Italian Renaissance was regarded as the essential foundation of artistic endeavour. Presented in sequence, Virgil is Twombly’s drawn manifestation of an inner vision, and powerfully evokes the timelessness of an entire culture and history through slender line and purity of expression.