Cy Twombly

Galleria Notizie, Turin

Collezione Eva Menzio, Turin

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in the early eighties

Heiner Bastian, Ed., Cy Twombly: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, 1961-65, Vol. II, Munich 1993, p. 238, no. 159, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colour in the printed catalogue is fairly accurate, although the overall tonality of the grey background is more green in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Very close inspection reveals minor wear to the top right corner tip and minor paint lifting to the far right imapsto peak. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra violet light.
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“My line is childlike but not childish. It is very difficult to fake... to get that quality you need to project yourself into the child's line. It has to be felt."

Cy Twombly quoted in: Hayden Herrera, 'Cy Twombly, A Homecoming', Harper’s Bazaar, No. 3393, August 1994, p. 147.

The frantic and calligraphic marks present in Untitled (Rome) from 1964 are an archetypal example of Twombly’s cathartic approach to painting. In part influenced by the Abstract Expressionists of 1950s New York, Untitled 1964 is a work that goes beyond complete abstraction – it is imbued with what Twombly would call “a history behind the thought” (Cy Twombly in conversation with Nicholas Serota, ‘History Behind the Thought’, 2007, online resource). In this sense, Twombly used his surroundings as well as personal interests and emotions as conceptual points of germination from which his work could grow. Untitled (Rome) is therefore a painting which reflects the artist in propria persona at a particular and crucial time in his career.

At the end of March, 1964, Twombly had just returned to Europe after the opening of his infamous Discourse on Commodus exhibition at the Castelli Gallery in New York – a show which the Minimalist Donald Judd would describe as a 'fiasco' in the art world. Twombly had produced nine paintings on the theme of the tyrannical Roman Emperor, but critical reviews dismissed the work as being 'too European' and out of step not only with the prevailing Miniamlist school, but also the rising Pop art movement of Twombly's American contemporaries. This unfavourable reception would have a surprising impact on Twombly, and later reflecting on this point in his career, he commented that he was “the happiest painter around for a couple of years”, explaining “no one gave a damn what I did” (Cy Twombly quoted in: Claire Daigle, ‘Lingering at the Threshold Between Word and Image’, Tate etc., Issue 13, Summer 2008). Despite the criticism, Twombly continued to create works with titles alluding to the ancient Greek and Roman themes. Having lived in Rome for 10 years since 1954, Twombly was surrounded by inspirational ancient art and architecture as he produced new work such as The School of Athens (II) and Il Parnasso. This rejection by the New York critics provided Twombly with a greater freedom to explore the nuances of his paintings, or what he called "[the] fusing of ideas, fusing of feelings, fusing projected onto atmosphere" (Cy Twombly, 'Interview with David Sylvester, 2000', quoted in: David Sylvester, Interviews with American Artists, London 2001, p. 181). Executed in 1964, Untitled (Rome) would be one of the first experiments with this new-found sense of freedom.

In Untitled (Rome) Twombly releases the rigidity of a defined reference point, allowing the viewer to focus closely on the forms and visual language rather than their contextual meaning. He draws attention to certain areas of the canvas by circumventing smears of lipstick-reds and ochres with unruly lines of graphite. These pencil marks are accented with piercing lines which interrupt the edges of a centrifugal force in the composition which evokes the arena of Rome's ancient Colosseum. In places the circular lines are further distorted into smudges which open a dialogue between hard and soft forms.

The melange of hurried, finger-bedaubed paint reflects the fast pace at which Twombly worked. “I sit for two or three hours and then in fifteen minutes I can do a painting” (Cy Twombly in conversation with Nicholas Serota, op. cit.). The speed at which Twombly worked left no time for paintbrushes – a barrier to the immediacy of his creative impact upon the canvas. These marks then, brimming with tactility, are literal and personal imprints of the artist’s hand, which attest to Twombly's conviction that the work was not meant as a reflection of a tangible reality but the “actual experience” of making a mark: “It does not illustrate. It is the sensation of its own realisation” (James Lawrence, ‘Cy Twombly’s Cryptic Nature’ in: Exhibition Catalogue, New York, Eykyn Maclean, Cy Twombly: Works from the Sonnabend Collection, 2012, p. 17).

Twombly understood the power of the written word, and its deconstruction is explored in this painting. In the lower part of the canvas, free, dynamic pencil strokes form a signature, whereas at the upper left side, calligraphic scribbles intimate script but are in fact abstract. As these marks become looser, their symbolic meaning dissolves and their formal properties and shapes become the focus. What is therefore expressed goes beyond what the artist could communicate with words alone; the marks become an ineffable representation of the emotion which occurred as the work was created. As art historian Richard Shiff further explains, “The word as disembodied sign becomes the word as embodied mark, imbued with the spirit of a gesture and located in a particular place or time” (Richard Shiff ‘Charm’ quoted in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, Tate Modern, Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons, 2008, p. 26).

Experimentation with form, representation and the written word would continue to inform many of Twombly's later works including his famed blackboard paintings. It wasn't until the 1994 MoMA New York retrospective, however, that the importance of these works was properly understood and academically acclaimed. This playful meandering between representation and abstraction defined Twombly's oeuvre and led him to become one of the world’s most admired artists. Untitled (Rome) is a work from a period of pivotal importance in his career. Created in the face of potentially devastating criticism, Twombly pressed on with his creative vision and to make work worthy of a place in the twentieth-century canon.