Cy Twombly

Leo Castelli Gallery, New York

Warren Benedek Gallery, New York

David Whitney, New York

Robert McClain, Houston

Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1995

New York, Leo Castelli Gallery, Works of Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly, May 1974

New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Cy Twombly: Paintings and Drawings 1954-1977, April - June 1979, p. 100, no. 81, illustrated in colour 

London, Tate Gallery; Tübingen, Kunsthalle Tübingen; Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart; Hamburg, Deichtorhallen Hamburg; and Vienna, Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien, Stiftung Froehlich: Sammlungsblöcke, May 1996 - August 1997, p. 274, no. 258, illustrated in colour

London, Tate Gallery, on loan, June - September 1999

Yvon Lambert, Catalogue raisonné des œuvres sur papier de Cy Twombly, Vol. VI, 1973-1976, Milan 1979, p. 118, no. 115, illustrated

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate, although the overall tonality of the paper is brighter and warmer in the original. Condition: Please refer to the department for a professional condition report.
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“The hand had traced out something like a flower. The flower was written and then unwritten, but the two movements remain vaguely superimposed upon each other.”

Roland Barthes, ‘Non Multa Sed Multum’ in: Yvon Lambert, Catalogue Raisonné des Oeuvres sur Papier de Cy Twombly, Volume VII 1977-1982, Milan 1991, p. 17.

Untitled (Captiva Island, Florida) is a remarkable example of Cy Twombly’s highly sophisticated approach to picture making. Executed during a two month stay with his life-long friend and fellow Black Mountain College alumnus Robert Rauschenberg, the present work belongs to a suite of 24 works on paper dedicated to Captiva Island. No doubt inspired by the verdant topography of Rauschenberg's island retreat, Twombly's drawings are characterised by their fidelity to the three pointed lotus flower. Symbolic of the sun and creation, and associated with Neferneferure, the daughter of Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten and his queen Nefertiti, the lotus blossom and its petals are emblematic of this corpus, often appearing within window-like frames of collaged graph paper. A sacred symbol within ancient Egyptian mythology, the lotus also signifies as an erotic emblem, and thus alludes back to Twombly's body of sexually charged work inspired by classical mythology and created in Italy during the 1960s. However, having emerged following the artist’s momentous blackboard works which announced his return to New York, the present corpus reignites the artist’s acclaimed dialogue with ancient sign and symbol, and his affinity with nature.

Twombly had shared a studio with Rauschenberg in New York for a number of years and despite the artist's relocation to Italy the two remained close friends. Fish House on Captiva Island, at which Twombly had been Rauschenberg’s guest on regular occasions over the winter months since the late 1960s, provided a perfect antidote to the intensity of New York life for both artists. Twombly, for whom travel was an integral catalyst for his work, was attracted to the wild fecundity and remoteness of the island, which at that time could only be reached via a causeway. The collages and drawings that Twombly produced during his two month visit in February and March of 1974 amount to a body of work that demonstrates an acute sensitivity to his surroundings. The force of the experimentation in these works is testament to the significance of the stay for Twombly and the opportunity it provided to work in an environment richly endowed with the exchange of ideas between peers. Indeed, it is interesting to note the converging creative pursuits of both artists during this time on Captiva; alongside Twombly, Rauschenberg also looked to the spirit of Ancient Egypt in the creation of his Early Egyptians corpus of relief works constructed from used cardboard boxes coated in sand (1973-74). Furthermore, as the exhibition history of the present work attests, both artists would show these works together in May 1974 at the Leo Castelli Gallery. 

Twombly’s experience as a cryptologist for the US Army informed his nuanced understanding of the way language could be cloaked in enigmatic patterns, hidden behind gesture. In Untitled (Captiva Island, Florida) the smudges, the marks, the patterns, the inferences are indexed on a palimpsest of transcriptions: an archive of repressed actions, a muted colloquy between intention and interpretation. As an artist, Twombly insisted he had a greater sense for the materiality of paper as opposed to the more viscous physicality of paint; as potently demonstrated here, its receptivity to a radical reconceptualisation of the relationship between the mark and the gesture was critical to the innovations Twombly bequeathed to the history of art.