Cy Twombly

Untitled 1971 is an extraordinary example of Cy Twombly's poetic evolution from earlier baroque compositions towards an 'archaic purity' which characterizes the artist's work between 1966 and 1972.  Twombly's astute comprehension of Minimalism, assimilated during his visits to New York from Italy in the mid-60s, is refined through his poignant sense of intimacy. As much as Abstract Expressionism had been in the 1950s, Conceptual reduction became both an inspiration and a challenge for him, and the present work emulates Twombly's response to this aesthetic treatise, as in the paramount "black paintings" series and the Treatise on the Veil (1970).

The dramatic and sensual vigor of his early works, such as the Ferragosto series (1961), pervades the present work, although with a determined abandonment of scatological attributes. In Untitled 1971 Twombly's lyrical use of script is employed with a heightened composure and maturity of gesture. The profound lyricism of the composition owes to the casual, undulating movement in its horizontal lines. "Twombly's [...] attraction to 'vertical' time, here is translated into a fascination for the forms of lateral 'speed' (Kirk Varnedoe, Cy Twombly, a Retrospective, New York, 1995).

The geometric, rhythmic lines of pastel are deliberately obscured by layers of gouache stressing the intensity of the brilliant palette chosen by the artist in direct contrast to the cool and stoic hue of the board. The intensity of the cerulean blue crayon recalls the sapphire waters Twombly encountered during his summers in Capri and Sperlonga.