Cy Twombly

In 1957, Twombly shifted to Rome where he fell in love with Baroness Tatiana Franchetti. They got married in New York in 1959 and had a son, Cyrus Alessandro Twombly. Like his father, Cyrus grew up to be a painter.

After getting married, the couple bought a palazzo in Rome. They also owned a 17th century villa. They remained married till Tatiana’s death in 2010.

In 1964, he met Nicola Del Roscio of Gaeta who became his long-term assistant, archivist and companion. He even bought a house and rented a studio in the quaint Italian village.

Twombly was born on 25 April 1928 in Lexington, Virginia. His father, Edwin Parker ‘Cy’ Twombly, was a baseball player who pitched for the Chicago White Sox.

Somewhere between twelve to fourteen years of age, Twombly embarked on his long term relationship with art by taking up private lessons with Pierre Daura. In 1946, he graduated from Lexington High School and joined Darlington School in Rome.

Later from 1948 to 1949, he studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and from 1949 to 1950, he was a student at the Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.

From 1950 to 1951, he got a scholarship to study at the Art Students League of New York. Eventually, he met Robert Rauschenberg there who convinced him to attend Black Mountain College, North Carolina.

From 1951 and 1952, he attended Black Mountain College along with Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, and Ben Shahn. He also met John Cage and was deeply influenced by Charles Olson, the poet and rector of the college.

In 1951, Twombly's independent exhibition was prearranged by the Samuel M. Kootz Gallery in New York City. At that time, he was influenced by Kline's black-and-white gestural expressionism and Paul Klee's imagery.

In 1952, he received an allowance from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to travel to North Africa and Europe. He was accompanied in this tour by Robert Rauschenberg.

In 1954, he served as a cryptologist in the U.S. Army, an activity that later influenced his artistic style. During leave periods, he would often travel to New York to paint.

From 1955 to 1956, he was a teacher at the Southern Virginia University. During summer holidays, he continued to travel to New York to paint in his accommodation.

By 1959, he had become a well-known artist. At that time, he was interested in tribal art and invoked primitivism in his work. His art typically had thin white lines on dark canvases that seemed to be scratched on the surface.

In the 1960s, the recurrent theme of Twombly’s work was mythology. From 1960 to 1963, he painted the rape of Leda by Zeus/Jupiter six times, once in 1960, twice in 1962, and thrice in 1963.Some of his other significant works of this period are ‘Leda and the Swan’ and ‘The Birth of Venus’.

He concluded the monumental ‘Four Seasons’ painting in 1994. The next year, he gifted it to the Museum of Modern Art.

For the 2010-11 season of the Vienna State Opera, he designed the large scale picture ‘Bacchus’, measuring 176 sqm as part of the exhibition series ‘Safety Curtain’.