Cy Twombly

Galleria La Bertesca, Genoa

Private Collection, Milan

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1985 

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is slightly warmer in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. The sheet is hinged verso to the backing board at the top edge. There is minor wear to the extreme edges of the sheet in places most notably to the lower left corner tip, 15cm above this on the left edge, and to the right edge towards the top right corner. Close inspection reveals a spot of inpainting to the lower edge of the lower left corner and a minor short scratch just next to this.
"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."

Untitled is typically Twombly. In its gestural force, in its vivid abstract instinctiveness, and in its historical cultural import, it is of a style entirely in keeping with the best of the artist’s output. Executed in five loose rows of intense blue scrawl, this work is a stunning example of the celebrated Roman Notes series. Stylistically, it identifies with the lasso-loop blackboard works of this era, while directly prefiguring the widely lauded series of Nini’s Paintings executed in 1971.

Following the Rococo exuberance of his works from the late fifties and sixties, which produced numerous pieces based on violent or erotic mythological subjects, the present work sees Twombly return to a more rarefied mode of depiction, shedding all but the most fundamental elements of his style to create a more instinctive immediate effect. The composition is action focussed, with every form inextricable from its production. Through lyrical loops and jagged flicks, Twombly’s mark-making “shares with broken branches in the forest or clues left at the scene of the crime the trace of a foreign presence that has intruded into a previously unviolated space” (Rosalind Krauss, et al., Art since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism: 1945 to the Present, New York 2004, p. 372). This emphatic and deliberate mode of depiction creates an image that is characteristically human in its cursive linear handwriting and distinct to Twombly in its instinctive force.

The critic Roberta Smith observed this expressionistic gestural power, and used it to frame the artist in a post-Surrealist context: “The out-of-control quality of his drawing techniques, which are rife with intimations of the deepest unconscious make his seem like the most sustained automatist career, bringing to fruition effects only hinted at by Miró and the Surrealists” (Roberta Smith quoted in: Harald Szeemann, Ed., ‘The Great Mediator’, Cy Twombly, Munich 1987, p. 16). This automatist style was practised by the Surrealists as a way to gain insight into the inner depths of the unconscious: in placing pen to paper without any premeditated plans, they allowed the hand to direct the composition. While the present work is more considered in composition, it shares that sense of intuitive fluency; so often appearing to approach figurative word forms, but remaining shrouded in obscurity.

In the late 1960s, Twombly was exploring a fascination with Leonardo da Vinci’s theories on the depiction of floods; a preoccupation that undoubtedly informed the sense of a seascape that suffuses this work. In the eddying washes and swirling tumult of aquamarine lines that roll across the present composition, we gain an unmistakable impression of the steady crash of ocean waves. Indeed, these abstractions make a worthy comparison with an excerpt of Leonardo’s advice from his treaty On a Deluge and its Depiction in Painting (c. 1515-17): “The crests of the waves of the sea tumble to their bases, falling with friction on the bubbles of their sides: and this friction… mingles with the gale in the manner of curling and wreathing clouds and at last it rises into the air and is converted into clouds” (Leonardo da Vinci, ‘On a Deluge and Its Depiction in Painting’ cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, Tate Modern, Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons, 2008, p. 138).

It was typical of Twombly to use historical source material of such esteem to inform and galvanise his work. He does not illustrate the passage, nor attempt to follow its detailed technical advice, but rather uses its content to inform his creative choices, and thus imbue his work with a similarly tempestuous mood. To this end, we might compare the present work to the 1959 series of drawings entitled Poems to the Sea. This group of twenty four works, which achieved a record price for the artist in 2013, were some of Twombly’s first engagements with the sea as subject matter, and they also muse on the marine theme without engaging with it illustratively. They share that same distinct sense of meditative wonder paired with stylistic spontaneity.