Cy Twombly

Galleria La Tartaruga, Rome
Mr. and Mrs. Robert C. Scull, New York
The Mayor Gallery, London
Sonnabend Gallery, New York
Private Collection, New York
Marisa del Re Gallery, New York
Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, Ohio
Sotheby's, New York, May 15, 2002, Lot 20 (consigned by the above)
L&M Arts, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above circa 2007

London, The Mayor Gallery, Cy Twombly, Paintings and Drawings 1959-1976, March - April 1980
Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art, Selected Works from the Agnes Gund Saalfield Collections, June - August 1982

Manfred de la Motte, "Cy Twombly," Quadrum, no. 16, 1964, p. 44, illustrated
Heiner Bastian, Cy Twombly: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Volume I, 1948-1960, Munich, 1992, cat. no. 126, p. 202, illustrated

This painting is in very good condition. Please refer to the following condition report prepared by Terrence Mahon. The painting is framed in a warm brown wood strip frame with a small float.
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.
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The explosive surface of Untitled from 1959 is enveloped by Cy Twombly’s autographic outbursts of scrawling pencil and wax crayon, interspersed with pulpy accumulations of globular oil paint. Standing as tangible testimony to Twombly’s staggering innovation and inimitable abstract aesthetic through the work’s visceral imagery, compositional economy, and graphic intelligence, his frantic erasures and gestural mark-making are juxtaposed against a cool palette of white, grey, and pastel hues. Untitled, a landmark painting executed during Twombly’s creative zenith in Rome, belongs to a group of works considered to be: “the most impressive, most emotionally wrought of Twombly’s career.” (Kirk Varnedoe in Exh. Cat., New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Cy Twombly: A Retrospective, 1994, pp. 34-35) Twombly affirmed that the paintings executed after his arrival in the Italian capital in 1957 display a liberty of indulgent sensual release that only living abroad could afford him. Painted in the same year as his epic suite Poems to the Sea, the present work is exemplary of the unrestrained inspiration that Twombly found in his newly adopted Italy.

Untitled is a vibrant response to Rome’s exuberance, and the rapture of the Mediterranean land and seascape. Compared to some of his earlier works executed during the first half of the 1950s, the present painting is lighter; the marks are more dispersed, allowing for a better appreciation of each individual element. Untitled also demonstrates an advanced level of lyricism, while presenting a more aggressive release of explicitly defiling disorder. To decipher Twombly’s idiosyncratic forms through a framework of conventional aesthetic values, however, is to ignore the intentionality behind their decisive ambiguity. Despite a residual yearning to decipher these written marks, Twombly’s visual language has neither syntax nor logic. In the words of Pierre Restany, it is comprised of “furtive gestures, an écriture automatique,” (Pierre Restany, The Revolution of the Sign, 1961) and function as acompulsory sensual and intellectualcatharsis that is both universal and particular to the individual.