Cy Twombly

1928 (Lexington) / 2011 (Rome)
Artist's webSite

Cy Twombly was born in Lexington, Virginia, in April 1928. It was an artistic desert. But this teenager with a talent for drawing was lucky enough to meet Pierre Daura, an artist who had fled Europe and the Spanish war. Member of the Circle and Square group, he introduced him to European art and the visionary currents of the avant-garde. The young Twombly undertook art studies in Rome, Georgia, Boston and New York where he met Rauschenberg. He explored the legacy of Expressionism, Dada and Surrealism, and the art brut of Dubuffet. Twombly is also interested in the irrational poetry that is everywhere latent in everyday life, and discovers in European art "an ideal of expression without compromise". A promising horizon for a strong personality. His first works of the 1950s show his interest in the primitive art of the Amerindians and Africans, in rites, fetishes, and their sexual components - "their fresh simplicity makes all other art seem tired".









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