Cy Twombly, born Edwin Parker Twombly in 1928 in Lexington (Virginia) in the United States of America, is one of the most renowned American painters of the second half of the 20th century. His work also extends to sculpture, drawing and photography.
He took his nickname from his father, “Cy”, who was a baseball player in the Chicago White Sox team.
After studying at the School of the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, he joined the Art Student League in New York in 1950, where he had a decisive encounter with the artists Knox Martin and Robert Rauschenberg. On Rauschenberg’s advice, he attended Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina, where he met Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell and the musician John Cage.
He travelled throughout Europe and North Africa, and then made regular links between the Old Continent and his homeland, a link that is reflected in his work.
His work is profoundly intellectual, with numerous historical, mythological, classical artistic and poetic references. Psychoanalysis, primitivism and the importance of writing and the sign in painting are all subjects he explores in his work.
Alongside Brice Marden, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, he followed the generation of Abstract Expressionists, represented by Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman, continuing the debate between abstraction and figuration that lay at the heart of the artistic questions of the twentieth century.
He died on 5 July 2011 in Rome, leaving a large body of work comprising over 600 paintings and countless drawings and sculptures.