Cy Twombly was a seminal American artist who emerged in the years following Abstract Expressionism, developing a visual language that remains singular in the history of postwar art. Renowned for his monumental paintings, Twombly worked with looping, gestural marks—scribbled, smeared, and inscribed onto raw canvas or linen—that conveyed both immediacy and poetic restraint. His practice drew deeply from Greek and Roman mythology, including narratives such as Leda and the Swan, merging these classical sources with the charged spontaneity of chalk-like markings reminiscent of a blackboard. As the artist once noted, “My line is childlike but not childish… It has to be felt.”
Born Edwin Parker Twombly Jr. on April 25, 1928, in Lexington, Virginia, Twombly studied at the Art Students League of New York, where he met Robert Rauschenberg. At Rauschenberg’s encouragement, he enrolled at Black Mountain College, studying under Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell, who introduced him to the work of Paul Klee—an influence that would resonate throughout his career.
From 1960 onward, Twombly lived primarily between Rome and the medieval port city of Gaeta, immersing himself in the Mediterranean landscape and its layered histories, including the ancient naval battles that shaped the region. He died in Rome on July 5, 2011.
In 2016, the Centre Georges Pompidou mounted a major retrospective of Twombly’s work, presenting approximately 140 pieces across painting, sculpture, drawing, and photography. Today, his works reside in the collections of leading institutions, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Courtauld Institute, London; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which in 1989 dedicated an entire gallery to his landmark suite Fifty Days at Iliam (1978).