Cy Twombly

Ritual 1949

Min-oe 1951

MIN-OE 1951. / BITUMEN, OIL BASED HOUSE PAINT ON CANVAS, 85 X 100 CM. ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG FOUNDATION.

Untitled 1951

Landscape 1951

ZYIG, 1951. / LEXINGTON VIRGINIA. 41 X 51.5 CM.

UNTITLED 1952. / OIL ON CANVAS, 73.5 X 91.5 CM.

SOLON I 1952. / LEXINGTON, VIRGINIA. HOUSE PAINT AND EARTH ON CANVAS, 102 X 133 CM.

UNTITLED 1953. / OIL BASED HOUSE PAINT, WAX CRAYON AND PENCIL ON CANVAS, 52 1/8 X 52 1/8 INCHES. ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG FOUNDATION

UNTITLED 1953. / MONOTYPE IN PAINT, 48 X 64 CM.

UNTITLED 1953. / MONOTYPE IN PAINT, 48 X 64 CM.

TIZNIT 1953. / WHITE LEAD, HOUSE PAINT, CRAYON, AND PENCIL ON CANVAS, 53, 1/2 X 6 2 1/2 INCHES (135.9 X 189.2 CM).

Dal 1947 al 1949 studia al School of the Museum of Fine Arts di Boston, alla Washington and Lee University e al Art Students League di New York dal 1950 al 1951. Lì conosce Robert Rauschenberg che lo accompagna al Black Mountain College, nei pressi di Asheville, nella Carolina del Nord, dove conosce anche John Cage.

Nel 1951 e 1952 è discepolo di Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell e Ben Shahn.

Nel 1951 organizza la sua prima mostra presso la Kootz Gallery di New York. In questo periodo le sue opere subiscono una forte influenza dall'espressionismo in bianco e nero di Franz Kline e dall'immagine di Paul Klee.

Nel 1952 riceve un premio dal Virginia Museum of Fine Arts che gli consente di viaggiare in Nord Africa, Spagna, Italia e Francia.

Fino al suo ritorno nel 1953, milita nell'esercito come "cryptologist" (decifra e crea codici), e questo lascia una distinta impronta sul suo stile. Dal 1955 al 1959, lavora a New York, dove diviene una figura prominente in un gruppo di artisti che annovera Robert Rauschenberg e Jasper Johns.

Nel 1959, giunge in Italia e si stabilisce a Roma. È durante questo periodo che comincia a creare le sue prime sculture astratte, le quali, sebbene varie nella forma e nel materiale, erano sempre ricoperte di pittura bianca. In Italia comincia a lavorare su larga scala e si distanzia dal suo precedente stile espressionista.

Morte[modifica | modifica wikitesto]

È scomparso a Roma nel 2011 all'età di 83 anni a seguito di un tumore. Dagli anni cinquanta viveva tra Roma e Gaeta.^[2]

Tratti stilistici[modifica | modifica wikitesto]

Twombly è conosciuto per il suo modo di sfuocare la linea tra disegno e pittura. Molte delle sue opere di pittura più note dei tardi anni cinquanta e primi anni sessanta ricordano i graffiti accumulati in anni sui bagni dei gabinetti, mentre quelle dei tardi anni Sessanta ricordano delle e tracciate in corsivo. A questo punto abbandona la pittura come rappresentazione, citando la linea o macchiando ogni segno con la sua propria storia, come soggetto a sé. Più tardi, molte delle sue pitture e lavori su carta andranno verso il "simbolismo romantico", e i loro titoli potranno essere interpretati visivamente attraverso forme e parole. Spesso cita il poeta Stéphane Mallarmé nei suoi lavori, così come innumerevoli miti e allegorie in opere come Apollo and the Artist, o nella serie di otto disegni consistenti nella sola parola "VIRGIL".

Mostre ed esposizioni[modifica | modifica wikitesto]

Nel 1964 viene invitato a esporre il suo lavoro alla Biennale di Venezia. Nel 1968, il Milwaukee Art Center allestisce la prima retrospettiva della sua arte. Nel 1987 viene onorato di retrospettive anche alla Kunsthaus Zürich, al Musée National d'Art Moderne di Parigi nel 1988, e al Museum of Modern Art di New York nel 1994, come anche a Houston, Los Angeles, e Berlino. La Cy Twombly Gallery della Menil Collection a Houston, progettata da Renzo Piano e aperta nel 1995, ospita più di trenta delle pitture, sculture e opere su carta, che datano dal 1953 al 1994. Un'ampia collezione di opere di Twombly è presente nella Pinakothek der Moderne a Monaco di Baviera, che nel 2007allestisce una mostra di ultime opere di pittura di Twombly, Blooming, a Scattering of Blossoms and Other Things, e nel 2009 inaugura il Brandhorstmuseum, che ospita la più grande collezione di Twombly al mondo dopo quella di Houston. Una sala del museo è stata concepita dall'architetto Sauerbruch Hutton per la Battaglia di Lepanto, un ciclo di dodici tele di dimensioni gigantesche. Inoltre vi sono esposte le opere più recenti, come Il ciclo delle rose.

Nel 2004 un recente lavoro di Twombly, il trittico Three Studies from the Temeraire (1998-1999), è stato acquistato dall'Art Gallery of New South Wales di Sydney per 4.5 milioni di dollari australiani.

Il caso Phaedrus 2007 e le richieste del fisco italiano per le imposte pagate negli USA[modifica | modifica wikitesto]

Il 19 luglio 2007 la polizia arrestò l'artista di origine cambogiana Rindy Sam per aver baciato uno dei pannelli di un trittico di Twombly, Phaedrus in mostra al Museum of Contemporary Art di Avignone.

Il pannello è una tela completamente bianca, ora macchiata dal rossetto di Sam^[3]. Condotta dinanzi al tribunale di Avignone, per "volontario danneggiamento di un'opera d'arte", Sam difese il proprio gesto dicendo: «Tutto ciò che ho fatto è un bacio. È un gesto d'amore, quando l'ho abbracciato, non ho riflettuto, pensavo che l'artista avrebbe capito... Questo gesto è stato un atto artistico provocato dal potere dell'arte». L'accusa lo definì «una specie di cannibalismo, o parassitismo», e pur ammettendo come fosse «palesemente non cosciente di ciò che aveva fatto», chiese che fosse condannata a pagare un'ammenda di 4.500 euro e 100 ore di affidamento ai servizi sociali. L'opera, il cui valore è stimato in due milioni di euro, è stata in mostra al Museum of Contemporary Art di Avignone. Nel novembre 2007, la Sam venne condannata ad un risarcimento di 1000 euro a favore del proprietario dell'opera, Yvon Lambert, di 500 euro per la galleria di Avignone in cui era esposta e di 1 euro simbolico verso l'autore.

L’artista è stato oggetto di verifiche tributarie in Italia in relazione ai suoi ultimi anni di vita, quando la sua presenza in Italia si prolungava anche per alcuni mesi nel corso dell’anno, al fine di godere di un clima più adatto alla sua età ed alla malattia che lo minacciava. Il fisco italiano ha sostenuto che la presenza in Italia dell’artista e di alcuni immobili nella sua disponibilità fossero sintomo della presenza di una base fissa utilizzata dal Maestro Twombly per la realizzazione delle sue opere d’arte. Edwin Parker Twombly, cittadino statunitense e residente ai fini tributari negli Stati Uniti d’America, dichiarava e pagava negli Stati Uniti, tutte le imposte sui redditi derivanti dall’attività artistica, come accertato dagli stessi verificatori italiani. La Guardia di Finanza prima, e L’Agenzia delle Entrate poi, hanno ritenuto che, ai sensi della Convenzione per evitare le doppie imposizioni stipulata tra l’Italia e gli Stati Uniti, una parte delle imposte pagate all’erario statunitense avrebbero dovuto essere corrisposte a quello italiano. L’interpretazione del fisco italiano, contestata dai legali dell’artista, ha prodotto uno scontro di interpretazioni legali e tributarie con conseguente richiesta, nei confronti di CY Twombly, di pagamento di imposte pregresse in Italia per molti milioni di euro. La questione si è risolta nel 2012, dopo il decesso dell’artista, con un accordo di adesione fiscale secondo il quale l’Edwin Parker Twombly Jr. Trust - istituito dallo stesso artista nel 2005 - nelle sue funzioni di esecutore delle volontà del Maestro Twombly, ha accettato di pagare in Italia alcuni milioni di euro d’imposte, ottenendo conferma dal fisco italiano che l’artista aveva assolto tutti i suoi obblighi tributari e che il fisco statunitense riconoscesse a rimborso, in tutto o in parte, le somme versate allo stato italiano per evitare la doppia imposizione di redditi, per i quali la relativa imposta dovuta era già stata versata.

I lavori del Maestro Twombly - esposti nelle principali gallerie di arte moderna e contemporanea del mondo - sono arrivati in Italia grazie al gallerista Lucio Amelio, che nel 1965 aprì a Napoli, insieme al gallerista Pasquale Trisorio, la Modern Art Agency^[4].

Edwin Parker "Cy" Twombly, Jr. (/saɪ ˈtwɒmbli/; April 25, 1928 – July 5, 2011^[1]) was an American painter of large-scale, freely scribbled, calligraphic and graffiti-like works on solid fields of mostly gray, tan, or off-white colors. His paintings are in the permanent collections of the New York's Museum of Modern Art and the Musée du Louvre in Paris.

Many of his later paintings and works on paper shifted toward "romantic symbolism", and their titles can be interpreted visually through shapes and forms and words. Twombly often quoted the poet Stéphane Mallarmé as well as many classical myths and allegories in his works. Examples of this are his Apollo and The Artist and a series of eight drawings consisting solely of inscriptions of the word "VIRGIL". In a 1994 retrospective, curator Kirk Varnedoe described Twombly's work as “influential among artists, discomfiting to many critics and truculently difficult not just for a broad public, but for sophisticated initiates of postwar art as well.”^[2] After acquiring Twombly's Three Studies from the Temeraire (1998–99), the Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales said, "sometimes people need a little bit of help in recognising a great work of art that might be a bit unfamiliar".^[3] Twombly is said to have influenced younger artists such as Anselm Kiefer, Francesco Clemente, and Julian Schnabel.^[4]

Early life and career[edit]

Twombly was born in Lexington, Virginia on April 25, 1928. Twombly's father, also nicknamed "Cy", pitched for the Chicago White Sox.^[5] They were both nicknamed after the baseball great Cy Young who pitched for, among others, the Cardinals, Red Sox, Indians, and Braves.

At age 12, Twombly began to take private art lessons with the Catalan modern master Pierre Daura.^[6] He served as a cryptographer in the U.S. army. After graduating from Lexington High School in 1946, Twombly attendedDarlington School in Rome, Georgia, and studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1948–49), and at Washington and Lee University (1949–50) in Lexington, Virginia. On a tuition scholarship from 1950 to 1951, he studied at the Art Students League of New York, where he met Robert Rauschenberg, who encouraged him to attend Black Mountain College near Asheville, North Carolina. At Black Mountain in 1951 and 1952 he studied with Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell and Ben Shahn, and met John Cage.

Arranged by Motherwell, the Samuel M. Kootz Gallery in New York organized Twombly's first solo exhibition in 1951. At this time his work was influenced by Kline's black-and-white gestural expressionism, as well as Paul Klee's imagery. In 1952, Twombly received a grant from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts which enabled him to travel to North Africa, Spain, Italy, and France. Between 1954 and 1956, he taught at the Southern Seminary and Junior College in Buena Vista, Virginia, currently known as Southern Virginia University.

In 1957, Twombly moved to Rome, where he met the Italian artist Baroness Tatiana Franchetti – sister of his patron Baron Giorgio Franchetti. They were married at City Hall in New York in 1959^[7] and then bought a palazzo on the Via di Monserrato in Rome. Later on, they preferred to dwell in Gaeta near Rome. In 2011, Twombly died in Rome after being hospitalized for several days; he had had cancer for many years.^[8] He has a son, Cyrus Alessandro Twombly, who is also a painter and lives in Rome.

Twombly was also survived by Nicola Del Roscio, "his longtime companion."^[9]

Work[edit]

After his return in 1953, Twombly served in the U.S. army as a cryptologist, an activity that left a distinct mark on his artistic style.^[10] From 1955 to 1959, he worked in New York, where he became a prominent figure among a group of artists including Robert Rauschenberg – with whom he had a relationship^[11] and was sharing a studio^[12] – and Jasper Johns. Exposure to the emerging New York School purged figurative aspects from his work, encouraging a simplified form of abstraction. He became fascinated with tribal art, using the painterly language of the early 1950s to invoke primitivism, reversing the normal evolution of the New York School. Twombly soon developed a technique of gestural drawing that was characterized by thin white lines on a dark canvas that appear to be scratched onto the surface. His early sculptures, assembled from discarded objects, similarly cast their gaze back to Europe and North Africa. He stopped making sculptures in 1959 and did not take up sculpting again until 1976.^[13]

Twombly often inscribed on paintings the names of mythological figures during the 1960s.^[14] Twombly's move to Gaeta in Southern Italy in 1957 gave him closer contact with classical sources. From 1962 he produced a cycle of works based on myths including Leda and the Swan and The Birth of Venus; myths were frequent themes of Twombly's 1960s work. Between 1960 and 1963 Twombly painted the rape of Leda by the god Zeus/Jupiter in the form of a Swan six times, once in 1960, twice in 1962 and three times in 1963.^[15]

Twombly's 1964 exhibition of the nine-panel Discourses on Commodus (1963) at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York was panned by artist and writer Donald Judd who said “There are a few drips and splatters and an occasional pencil line,” he wrote in a review. “There isn’t anything to these paintings.”^[16]

Erotic and corporeal symbols became more prominent, whilst a greater lyricism developed in his 'Blackboard paintings'. Between 1967 and 1971, he produced a number of works on gray grounds, the 'grey paintings'. This series features terse, colorless scrawls, reminiscent of chalk on a blackboard, that form no actual words. Twombly made this work using an unusual technique: he sat on the shoulders of a friend, who shuttled back and forth along the length of the canvas, thus allowing the artist to create his fluid, continuous lines.^[17] In the summer and early autumn of 1969, Twombly made a series of fourteen paintings while staying at Bolsena, a lake to the north of Rome. In 1971, Nini Pirandello, the wife of Twombly’s Roman gallerist Plinio De Martiis, died suddenly. In tribute, Twombly painted the elegiac "Nini’s Paintings".

His later sculptures exhibit a similar blend of emotional expansiveness and intellectual sophistication. From 1976, Twombly again produced sculptures, lightly painted in white, suggestive of Classical forms. Like his earlier works, these pieces are assembled from found materials such as pieces of wood or packaging, or cast in bronze and covered in white paint and plaster.^[18] In an interview with critic David Sylvester, on the occasion of the large exhibition of his sculpture at Kunstmuseum Basel in 2000, Twombly revealed that, for him, the demands of making sculpture were distinctly different from those required of painting. “[Sculpture is] a whole other state. And it’s a building thing. Whereas the painting is more fusing—fusing of ideas, fusing of feelings, fusing projected on atmosphere.”^[19]

In the mid-1970s, in paintings such as Untitled (1976), Twombly began to evoke landscape through colour (favouring brown, green and light blue), written inscriptions and collage elements.^[20] In 1978 he worked on the monumental historical ensemble Fifty Days at Iliam, a ten-part cycle inspired by Homer's Iliad; since then Twombly continued to draw on literature and myth, deploying cryptic pictorial metaphors that situate individual experience within the grand narratives of Western tradition, as in the Gaeta canvases and the monumental Four Seasons concluded in 1994.

In an essay in the catalogue to the 2011 Dulwich exhibition (see below), Katharina Schmidt summarizes the scope and technique of Twombly's œuvre:

"Cy Twombly's work can be understood as one vast engagement with cultural memory. His paintings, drawings and sculptures on mythological subjects have come to form a significant part of that memory. Usually drawing on the most familiar gods and heroes, he restricts himself to just a few, relatively well-known episodes, as narrated by poet-historians, given visible shape by artists and repeatedly reinterpreted in the literature and visual art of later centuries.....His special medium is writing. Starting out from purely graphic marks, he developed a kind of meta-script in which abbreviated signs, hatchings, loops, numbers and the simplest of pictographs spread throughout the picture plane in a process of incessant movement, repeatedly subverted by erasures. Eventually, this metamorphosed into script itself."^[21]

However, in a 1994 article Kirk Varnedoe thought it necessary to defend Twombly's seemingly random marks and splashes of paint against the criticism that "This is just scribbles – my kid could do it".

"One could say that any child could make a drawing like Twombly only in the sense that any fool with a hammer could fragment sculptures as Rodin did, or any house painter could spatter paint as well as Pollock. In none of these cases would it be true. In each case the art lies not so much in the finesse of the individual mark, but in the orchestration of a previously uncodified set of personal "rules" about where to act and where not, how far to go and when to stop, in such a way as the cumulative courtship of seeming chaos defines an original, hybrid kind of order, which in turn illuminates a complex sense of human experience not voiced or left marginal in previous art."^[22]

Together with Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, Twombly is regarded as the most important representative of a generation of artists who distanced themselves from Abstract Expressionism.^[23]

Exhibitions[edit]

After having shown at Stable Gallery from 1953 to 1957, Twombly moved to Leo Castelli Gallery and later exhibited with Gagosian Gallery. Gagosian Gallery opened a new gallery in Rome, Twombly's hometown, on the December 15, 2007 with their inaugural exhibition being his "Three Notes from Salalah".^[24]

In 1993, at Matthew Marks Gallery in New York, an exhibition of Twombly's photographs offered a selection of large blurry color images of tulips, trees and ancient busts, based on the artist's Polaroids. In 2008, a specially curated selection of Twombly's photographic work was exhibited in "Huis Marseille", the Museum for Photography, Amsterdam; the exhibition was opened by Sally Mann. For the season 2010/2011 in the Vienna State Opera Cy Twombly designed the large scale picture (176 sqm) "Bacchus" as part of the exhibition series "Safety Curtain", conceived by museum in progress.^[25] In 2011, the Museum Brandhorst, mounted a retrospective of Twombly's photographs from 1951 to 2010. It later was passed over to the "Museum für Gegenwartskunst" at Siegen^[26] and the Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels.

Twombly's work went on display as part of "Twombly and Poussin: Arcadian Painters" at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London from June 29, 2011 less than a week before Twombly's death. The show was built on a quote by Twombly stating that “I would’ve liked to have been Poussin, if I’d had a choice, in another time” and is the first time that his work was put in an exhibition with Poussin.^[27] Opening in conjunction with the museum's Modern Wing, Twombly's solo exhibition —Cy Twombly: The Natural World, Selected Works 2000–2007— was on display at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009. "The Last Paintings", Twombly's most recent solo exhibition, began in Los Angeles in early 2012. Following the Hong Kong exhibition, it will travel to Gagosian Gallery locations in London and New York throughout 2012. The eight untitled paintings are closely related to the Camino Real group that inaugurated Gagosian Paris in 2010.

Retrospectives[edit]

In 1968, the Milwaukee Art Museum mounted the first retrospective of his art. Twombly had his next retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1979, curated by David Whitney. The artist has later been honored by retrospectives at the Kunsthaus Zürich in 1987 (curated by Harald Szeemann), the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, in 1988, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1994, with additional venues in Houston, Los Angeles, and Berlin.^[28] In 2001, the Menil Collection, the Kunstmuseum Basel, and the National Gallery of Art presented the first exhibition devoted entirely to Twombly's sculpture, assembling sixty-six works created from 1946 to 1998.^[29]The European retrospective "Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons" opened at the Tate Modern, London, in June 2008, with subsequent versions at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome in 2009.

London held a Twombly retrospective at the Tate Modern from June 19 to September 14, 2008. Text for the showing read:

"This was his first solo retrospective in fifteen years, and provides an overview of his work from the 1950s to now.... At the heart of the exhibition is Twombly’s work exploring the cycles associated with seasons, nature and the passing of time. Several key groups are brought together for the first time, such as Tate’s Four Seasons (1993–94) with those from the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The exhibition also explores how Twombly is influenced by antiquity, myth and the Mediterranean, for example the violent red swirls in the Bacchus 2005 paintings which bring to mind the drunken god of wine. The exhibition provides a unique opportunity to see the full range of Twombly’s long and influential career from a fresh perspective.^[18] "

Collections[edit]

In 1989, the Philadelphia Museum of Art opened permanent rooms dedicated to his monumental 10-painting cycle, Fifty Days at Iliam (1978), based on Alexander Pope’s translation of “The Iliad.”^[16]

The Cy Twombly Gallery of the Menil Collection in Houston, which was designed by Renzo Piano and opened in 1995, houses more than thirty of Twombly's paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, dating from 1953 to 1994. A large collection of Twombly's work is also kept by the Museum Brandhorst, the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich and The Dallas Museum of Art, Texas.

In 1995, The Four Seasons entered the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art as a gift from the artist. A recent (1998–1999) Twombly work, Three Studies from the Temeraire, a triptych, was purchased by the Art Gallery of New South Wales for A$4.5 million in 2004. In 2010, Twombly’s permanent site-specific painting, Ceiling was unveiled in the Salle des Bronzes at the Musée du Louvre; he is only the third artist to have been invited to do so. The other two were Georges Braque in the 1950s and François Morellet in 2010.^[30] In 2011, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, made a large acquisition of nine works worth about $75 million.^[13]

Some of his work was also shown in an exhibition named 'Turner Monet Twombly: Later Paintings' which ran from 22 June to 28 October 2012 at Tate Liverpool.^[31]

The Art Institute of Chicago hosts an ongoing exhibition, "Cy Twombly: Sculpture Selections, 1948–1995". The exhibition features examples of Twombly’s sculptures made between 1948 and 1995, composed primarily of rough elements of wood coated in plaster and white paint.^[32] The Institute also holds prints, drawings, and paintings by the artist in its permanent collection.^[33]

Recognition[edit]

Twombly was a recipient of numerous awards, in 1984 he was awarded the “Internationaler Preis für bildende Kunst des Landes Baden-Württemberg” and in 1987 the “Rubens-Peis der Stadt Siegen,” but most notably awarded thePraemium Imperiale in 1996.

Twombly was invited to exhibit his work at the Venice Biennale in 1964, 1989 and 2001 when he was awarded the Golden Lion at the 49th Venice Biennale. In 2010, he was made Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur by the French government. During fall 2010, Tacita Dean produced a film on Twombly, titled "Edwin Parker".^[34]

Cy Twombly Foundation[edit]

Twombly's will, written under U.S. law, allocated the bulk of the artist's art and cash to the Cy Twombly Foundation of New York. The foundation now controls much of Twombly's work. Under the foundation, a 25-foot-wide Beaux Arts mansion on East 82nd Street is due to open on a limited basis beginning in late 2012 as an exhibition and study center.^[35]

Art market[edit]

In 1990, a Christie's auction set a record for Twombly, with his 1971 untitled blackboard painting fetching $5.5 million. In 2011, a Twombly work from 1967, "Untitled", sold for $15.2 million at Christie's in New York.^[36] A new record was made in May 2012 for the 1970 painting "Untitled (New York)" at Sotheby's, selling for $ 17.4 million (€ 13.4 million).^[37] In November 2013 a record price of $21.7 million for Poems to the Sea (1959), an abstract, 24-part multimedium work on paper, was achieved at Sotheby's Contemporary Art Sale.^[38]

Publications[edit]

A first monograph of drawings edited by Heiner Bastian was published in 1972. In 1977, the first monograph on the paintings was published by Propyläen Verlag in Berlin, followed by the publication of his catalogue raisonné of sculpture by Nicola Del Roscio in 1997.

Phaedrus Incident[edit]

In 2007, an exhibition of Twombly's paintings, Blooming, a Scattering of Blossoms and Other Things, and other works on paper from gallerist Yvon Lambert's collection was displayed from June to September in Avignon (France), at the Lambert Foundation (Hôtel de Caumont). On July 19, 2007, police arrested Cambodian-French artist Rindy Sam after she kissed one panel of Twombly's triptych Phaedrus. The panel, an all-white canvas, was smudged by Sam's red lipstick. She was tried in a court in Avignon for "voluntary degradation of a work of art".

Sam defended her gesture to the court: "J'ai fait juste un bisou. C'est un geste d'amour, quand je l'ai embrassé, je n'ai pas réfléchi, je pensais que l'artiste, il aurait compris... Ce geste était un acte artistique provoqué par le pouvoir de l'art" ("It was just a kiss, a loving gesture. I kissed it without thinking; I thought the artist would understand.... It was an artistic act provoked by the power of Art").

The prosecution, calling it "A sort of cannibalism, or parasitism", while admitting that Sam is "visibly not conscious of what she has done", asked that she be fined €4500 and compelled to attend a citizenship class. The art work, which is worth an estimated $2 million, was on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Avignon.^[39][40][41] In November 2007 Sam was convicted and ordered to pay €1,000 to the painting's owner, €500 to the Avignon gallery that showed it, and €1 to the painter.^[42]

Cy Twombly was born in Lexington, Virginia, on 25th April 1928 to parents from New England.

1942 - 1946

The most influential person on his formative years was the Spanish artist Pierre Duara who had come to Lexington from Paris for the duration of the war. Twombly attended his painting classes and lectures on Modern European Art for four years starting when he was fourteen years old.

1946 - 1949

Graduated from Lexington High School and attended Darlington School in Rome, Georgia. Spent the summer of 1947 in Ogunquit, Maine (an art colony that existed at the time) In the autumn of 1947 enrolled at the Boston Museum School, attending night classes the first year and day school in the second. During the late forties Twombly's main interests were German Expressionism, the Dada movement, Schwitters' as well as Soutine's work. Saw for the first time reproductions of works by Dubuffet and Giacometti which greatly impressed him.

1949 - 1951

Returned to Lexington, Virginia, to enter Washington and Lee University where an art department had opened that year. Continued his studies at the Art Students League in New York City in 1950 on a tuition scholarship. During the second semester met Robert Rauschenburg who was the first person of his own age to share the same interests and preoccuptions as an artist. In New York city he saw shows of Pollock, Rothko, Newman, Still, Motherwell and others at Betty Parsons' and at the Kootz Gallery, and for the first time de Kooning's and Kline's work at the Egan Gallery. Spent the summer and winter semester of 1951 at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. During the summer Ben Shahn and Robert Motherwell were artists in residence. In November 1951 Twombly had his first one-person exhibition at The Seven Stairs Gallery in Chicago of paintings done at Black Mountain College that summer. The show was arranged by the photographer Aaron Siskind and the curator Noah Goldowsky. First exhibition in New York arranged by Robert Motherwell at the Kootz Gallery.

Cy Twombly and Robert Rauschenberg. Robert Rauschenberg, Venice 1952

1952 - 1953

In the autumn of 1952 Twombly received a travelling grant from the Richmond Museum of Fine Arts and left with Rauschenburg for his first sojourn in Europe and North Africa. Went from Rome to Florence, Siena, Assisi, and Venice, continuining their journey in Morocco and spent the winter 1952/1953 there. Travelled to Casablanca, Marrakesh, the Atlas Mountains, Tangier and Tetuan, returning to Rome by way of Madrid and Barcelona. Exhibition in Florence of tapestries done in Tangier and Tetuan. In the late spring went back to America, working in New York City in the studio of Robert Rauschenburg to prepare for a show at The Stable Gallery in the Autumn. Twombly's pictures showed phallic shapes and bunches of hairy tufts which can be traced back to drawings made at the ethnographic museum in Rome and which he named after North African villages, such as Quarzazat or Tiznit. For the first time, he drew and scratched into wet paint, creating a strongly lined surface.

Cy Twombly. Robert Rauschenberg, Tangier, Winter 1952/1953

1953 - 1957

Inducted into the army in 1953; basic training in Augusta, Georgia, later stationed in Washington D.C. During weekends in Augusta he did drawings that formed the basis for the second one-person Stable show as well as direction everything would take from then on. In August 1954 Cy Twombly was discharged from the army. In Febuary he accepted a teaching post in Virginia for one year. Painted the large work Panorama in Rauschenburg's Fulton Street Studio, the only surviving painting of a group of six or eight works. Later in the autumn rented an apartment on William Street where he paintedThe Geeks, Free Wheeler, Acadamy and other works. Exhibited at The Stable Gallery in January 1956. Twombly had his third and last one-person show at The Stable Gallery in January 1957, where Panorama was shown.

Cy Twombly in Fulton Street Studio. Robert Rauschenberg, New York 1954

1957 - 1962

Left New York for the summer in Italy where he took a house on the Isle of Procida for July and August. In the autumn rented an apartment in Rome facing the colosseum where Olympia, Sunset, Blue Room and Arcadia were painted. In 1958 Twombly had his first exhibition in Rome at the Galleria La Tartaruga; worked in a studio on Via Appia Antica. Returned to America in early spring. Married Tatiana Franchetti in New York City. Took a studio in Lexington, Virginia, painting a series of ten large paintings which were sent to Leo Castelli Gallery but never shown.

Cy Twombly. Tatiana Franchetti, Sperlonga, August 1959

After a second trip to Cuba and Mexico returned to Italy late in the summer and went to Sperlonga. In December his son Cyrus Alessandro was born in Rome. Twombly moved to Via Monserrato where he painted that year The Age of Alexander, to Leonardo, Crimes of Passion, Odeion, Sunset Series, School of Fountainbleau, Sahara, Herodiade and other works.

Cy Twombly. Werner Schloske, Rome 1962

End of April second exhibition at the Galleria La Tartarugua, Rome. Spent the month of July in Saint'Angelo on the Isle of Ischia and worked on a large group of drawings. Travelled to Greece in August; in the autumn to Castel Gardena, Santa Christina, Dolomites. First exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, in October. Rented a studio in Rome on Piazza del Biscione, his working place for the following five years. In 1961 the paintings Triumph of Galatea, the five Ferragosta works, Empire of Flora, Bay of Naples, School of Athens and other works were exucuted here. Spent the months of June and July in the Cyclades. On the Isle of Mikonos in August he worked on the extensive cycle of drawings Delian Odes; a few of these drawings were destroyed by playing children, who had discovered them in his rooms. Spent September in Castel Gardens, Dolomites. The Galleria La Tartaruga published a first comprehensive catalogue. The publication shows a selection of works executed between 1954 and 1960.

Cy Twombly. Tatiana Franchetti, Egypt 1962

1962 - 1966

Went to Egypt and Sudan in January and Febuary. In 1962 he painted Birth of Venus, Hero and Leander, Leda and the Swan, Hyperion (to Keats), Dutch Interior, Second voyage to Italy and other works in his studio on Piazza del Biscione. In December 1963 Twombly worked on the nine-part paintingDiscourse on Commodus. The cycle refers to the life of the Roman emperor Aurelius Commodus (161-192 A.D.). In March Discourse on Commodus was shown in New York at the Leo Castilli Gallery. Spent the spring in Greece. During July and August Twombly worked in Castel Gardena, Dolomites, on a series of drawings which he called Notes from a Tower. In Rome he painted the triptych Ilium (One Morning Ten Years Later) the second version of School of Athens and Il Parnasso.

In the autumn he went to Munich to work on paintings which were shown at the Galere Friedrich + Dahlem, Munich, under the title The Artist in the Northern Climate together with the drawings Notes from a Tower. The theme of these paintings resumes the iconography of the drawings which he had done in the Dolomites during the summer. Twombly spent the first months of the year travelling to Paris, London, Brussels, Amsterdam. In October his first comprehensive museum exhibition opened at the Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, traveling on to the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, and the Stadelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Travelled to New York in November; worked there on a series of drawings to be shown at the Leo Castelli Gallery in Febuary 1966. Went to Virginia at the end of the year. Returned from Lexington, Virginia, to New York City in January where he worked in a apartment on 52nd Street. Travelled by boat back to Naples on 22nd March. In Rome, the first grey paintings were done, in a novel, significantly reduced pictorial language, inscribing the motif with white wax crayon into a dark surface. The sparse iconography of these paintings was to become the center of Twombly's work for the following years.

Cy Twombly. Mario Dondero, Rome 1962

1967 - 1971

Returned again to New York City in the autumn and rented a studio on Canal Street. In February 1967, the Galleria Notizie in Turin showed the first group of the grey paintings. In October, the Leo Castelli Gallery showed for the first time in the U.S.A. the grey paintings that Twombly had done in New York. In the months of October and November, Twombly worked in New York City and in Lexington. Travelled back by boat to Naples on 24 November. In January, the first Twombly retrospective opened at the Milwaukee Art Center. The exhibition showed a selection of paintings and drawings from 1956 onwards. In May and June, Twombly worked in a studio on the Bowery. Here he painted theOrion pictures and the series of paintings Synopsis of a battle the first large-scale version of Treatise on the Veil and Veil of Orpheus.

Spent the months of August in Castel Gardena and worked again in New York City in the autumn. In December Twombly went back for a short period to Captiva Island, Florida. Here he worked on a series of collages, in which he used reproductions of Leonardo's drapery studies, Deluge motifs as well as of his anatomical drawings. Later that month Twombly went to Los Angeles where he had his first exhibition at the Nicholas Wilder Gallery; from California he travelled to Mexico. Spent the month of January on the Caribbean Isle of Saint Martin where he made drawings whose iconography prepared the paintings which followed in the summer. From May through October Twombly worked in the Palazzo del Drago at the Lago di Bolsena, on a series of fourteen large-format paintings.

Worked in New York City in the winter and travelled to Lexington, Virginia. Spent the month of March 1970 again on Captiva Island. Visited Ireland in the summer. Painted in Rome the second, large-format version of Treatise on the Veil. In February, new works were shown at the Galleria Gian Enzo Sperone in Turin. Twombly spent the summer in the Villa Orlando on the Isle of Capri. In Rome, he painted a dark, large-format canvas, an extremely free work, whose monadic white cyphers invoked the paintings Panorama of 1955. Twombly worked on the group of the five Nini paintings in reaction to the death of Nini Pirandello. Went back to New York City again in November.

Cy Twombly working on the Bolsena paintings. Ugo Mulas, Bolsena 1969

1972 - 1976

Spent part of the winter on Captiva Island, Florida. In January the Leo Castelli Gallery showed three large paintings which conclude the works of the last years with a rather conceptually conceived, minimalist iconography. After his return to Rome Twombly started to work on an immense canvas with the working title Anatomy of Melancholy (in reference to Robert Burton's treatise, published in 1621) the painting would change over the years and finally be completed more than 20 years later as one of his most challenging and beautiful works with a totally different, final subtitle: Say Goodbye Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor. Went for the summer to Capri. Returned in the winter to Captiva Island where he worked on drawings.

In April the Kunsthalle Bern held a retrospective of his paintings which travelled to Munich. During the same time the Kunstmuseum Basel showed a comprehensive selections of drawings done in the last 20 years. A first monograph of drawings edited by Heiner Bastien was published in Berlin. Spent the month of August in Castel Gardena, Santa Christana where he did a cycle of drawings entitled 24 Short Pieces. Travelled with friends to northern and central India in November. Stayed on Captiva Island in February. Upon his return to Rome worked on a portfolio of prints titled Natural History Part I Mushrooms. Had gallery exhibitions in Munich, Turin, Paris and Naples. An archive of Cy Twombly's paintings was established in Berlin.

In the winter he went to Captiva Island and after his return to Italy took a house in Bassano in Teverina which he restored and used as a studio for the summer in the following years. Travelled to Tunesia in the spring. In March 1975, seven years after the first museum exhibition in America, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia showed a comprehensive selection of paintings, drawings and sculptures. The exhibition travelled to San Fransico. Started in May to work on large-scale works on paper. Mars and the Artist andApollo and the Artist were done in Rome.

1976 - 1981
Completed in May a large group of water colours in New York which were shown at the Leo Castille Gallery in September. In November the Galleria Gian Enzo Sperone in Rome opened an exhibition with large-scale works on paper, including Leda and the Swan, Idilli and Narcissus. Finished a second portfolio of prints titled Natural History Part II - Some Trees of Italy. In the summer of 1977 Twombly completed the three-panel painting Thyrsis in Bassano. Started to work on the large cycle Fifty Days at Iliam, a ten part painting which was inspired by reading the Iliad in the translation by Alexander Pope. The scenes of the painting follow decisive incidents of the battle for Troy. Twombly finished the work in the following year. Fifty Days at Iliam was shown in November by the Lone Star Foundation at Heiner Friedrich's space in New York. After the completion of this cycle Twombly painted the two works Goethe in Italy.

In the autumn the first monograph on the paintings was published by Propylen Verlag in Berlin. In Naples the Lucio Amelio Gallery showed a group of eleven sculptures which Twombly had done during the last two years. At the Whitney Museum of American Art a comprehensive retrospective of works executed between 1954 and 1977, opened in April. Twombly returned to Paris in May where he met Roland Barthes. Worked in Bassano in June and July. Participated with a large cycle of drawings in the Venice Biennale. Went for the first time in late spring to work in a studio in Formia, a harbour town between Rome and Naples. Returned to Bassano for the months of August and September where he worked on a large group of drawings which were exhibited at the Sperone Westwater Fischer Gallery in New York in April 1982. The Museum Haus Lange in Krefeld held a first retrospective of his sculptures. The exhibition included 23 works executed between 1955 and 1981. In Rome in November he painted the three large Bacchus works.

Cy Twombly. Plinio de Martiis, Rome 1981

1982 - 1987
Stayed at the beginning of the year in New York, and after his return to Italy in March worked in Gaeta, a harbour town near Formia. Spent the summer months in Bassano. The Naxos, Suma, and Lycian drawings were executed in Bassano. In the beginning of February 1983 he went to Key West, Florida where he did a set of drawings. Returned via New York to Rome at the end of March, and in June he travelled to Yemen with his son Alessandro. Worked in Bassano in August on the Anbasis drawings. Spent the winter in Key West where he did the set of drawings Proteus. The Musee d'art contemporiain in Bordeaux opened an exhibition of works on paper in May which focused on mythological themes. In the summer he worked in Bassano where the three-part painting Hero and Leandro was done.

In September the Kunst-halle Baden-Baden staged a large retrospective of paintings and drawings, curated by Katherine Schmidt. On the occasion of the exhibition the state of Baden-Wurttemburg honoured Cy Twombly with the award Internationaler Preis fur bildenende Kunst des Landes Baden-Wurttemberg. Spent the winter months in Egypt staying mostly in Luxor. In the summer Twombly worked in Bassano where the second painting Hero and Leandro (to Christopher Marlowe) was completed. The large series Analysis of the Rose as Sentimental Despair was finished; the nine-part painting is based on poetical quotations by Rilke, Rumi and Leopardi. Twombly took a house in Gaeta which he restored during the following years. Did the design and supervised the painting of the curtain for the Opera Bastille in Paris. In February of 1987 a large retrospective, curated by Harold Szeemann, was held in the Kunsthaus Zurich; the exhibition travelled to Madrid, London, Dusseldorf and Paris. Twombly was elected a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. The city of Siegen, Germany, awarded him the Rubens-Preis.

1988 - 1992
In the spring worked in Gaeta on paintings Venere Sopra Gaeta and in Rome on a cycle of nine Green paintings which were shown in the summer at the Venice Biennale. Received the award Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In February 1989 the Sperone Westwater Gallery in New York City held an exhibition of his early paintings and sculptures, works which were done in 1951 and 1953; most of them were shown for the first time. The Menil Collection in Houston opened an exhibition of paintings, drawings and sculptures in September. The show travelled to Des Moines in April 1990. In October 1989 the ten-part painting Fifty Days at Iliam, completed in 1978, was installed in a room at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania. Twombly spent the winter months on the Seychelles where he did a series of drawings which were shown in the summer of 1990 at the gallery of Thomas Ammann in Zurich. In 1992 Thomas Ammann included them in a book entitled Souvenirs of d'Arros and Gaeta.

In December the Gagosian Gallery in New York showed 8 of the 14 Bolsena-paintings of 1969 for the first time together. Spent Christmas 1989 in Istanbul. Received in April 1990 the Skowhegan medal for painting. Painted several works entitled Summer Madness in Bassano and completed the large sculptureThermopylae which was shown at the gallery Piece Unique in Paris in the autumn of 1991. Spent the winter in Sorrento. Stayed on the Greek island Syros in early summer. In July began to paint the two sets of the Quattro Stagioni in Bassano. Spent the winter on Jupiter Island, Florida. Did a series of sculptures. In the spring took a house in Lexington, Virginia. Returned in the summer to Italy. In Gaeta completed a three-panel painting in which the boundless space dissolved in sea and air. The motif of the boat becomes one of his favourite forms. Now uses quotations from poetry even more frequently. The first volume of the Catalogue Raisonne of the Paintings was published in the autumn.

Cy Twombly. David Seidner, Lexington, Virginia 1994

1993 - 1995

Returned to Jupiter Island, Florida for the winter. Spent the summer months in Gaeta where he finished the paintings Autunno and Inverno of the first set ofQuattro Stagioni. Received an honorary doctor's degree from the Washington and Lee University in Lexington. Spent the winter in Lexington and the spring in Gaeta. Rented a space in a warehouse upon his return to Lexington where he finished the very large canvas (now extended to three parts) which he had begun more than 20 years earlier in Rome, and now subtitled Say Goodbye Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor. Later in June and July he completed the first set of the Quattro Stagioni in Gaeta. Went back to Lexington in August.

At the end of September a comprehensive retrospective, curated by Kirk Varnedoe, opened at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibition travelled for more than a year: first to Houston in February 1995, then to Los Angeles in April and finally to Berlin in early autumn of 1995. During the retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, the Gagosian Gallery showed for the first time the very large three-panel painting in New York. After his return to Italy in November 1994 Twombly went to Munich, Berlin, Prague and Paris. Finished the set of the Quattro Stagioni in Gaeta.

Cy Twombly and Dominique de Menil at the Cy Twombly Gallery. Houston, Texas 1995

Went to Houston in February for the opening of the second venue of the MoMA-exhibition and the inauguration of the Cy Twombly Gallery in Houston; a museum founded by the De Menil family and designed by Renzo Piano based on plans by the artist and in close collaboration with him. 35 paintings, sculptures and works on paper from 1954 to the present are permanently exhibited. The fourth volume of the catalogue Raisonne of his paintings, edited by Heiner Bastion, was published in Munich. Travelled to Berlin at the end of August to attend the opening of the last venue of his retrospective at the Neue Nationalgalerie. Visited St. Petersburg afterwards and returned to Italy.

1996 -2000
In Gaeta , during the summer months, he works on sculptures and three sets of monoprints, depicting for the first time, motifs influenced by the Battle of Lepanto, which are shown in December in New York at the Whitney Museum of American Art. An exhibition titled Cy Twombly: Photographs opens at the Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles. In May Twombly is included in the influential exhibition L'Informe: Mode d'emploi, organised by Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss, at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, which is structured around the theories of Georges Bataille. In the autumn he travels to Japan to receive the Premium Imperiale. In early 1997 a new solo exhibition opens at Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne.

His first solo sculpture exhibition in the United States, Cy Twombly: Ten Sculptures, opens in November at Gagosian Gallery, New York, on the publication of his catalogue raisonne of sculpture by Nicola Del Roscio. He spends the winter of 1998 in Lexington, where he concentrates on sculpture. Eight of his sculptures are shown at the American Academy in Rome. In May 1999, he travels to Iran and spends time in Isfahan. Twombly's works are included in the group exhibition The American Century: Art & Culture 1900 - 2000, Part II, 1950-2000, held at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. In Gaeta, he completes Three Studies for the Temeraire, a re-interpretation of J.M.W. Turner's The Fighting Temeraire, for the group exhibition Encounters: New Art From Old, organised by the National Gallery, London, which opens in 2000.

2000 -2004
At the end of winter 2000, he returns to Gaeta via Basel, where Cy Twombly: Die Skulptur, a retrospective exhibition of sixty-six sculptures made between 1948 and 1998, opens at the Kunstmuseum Basel in April, organized by Katherine Schmidt in collobaration with Paul Winkler. It travels over the the following year ( as Cy Twombly: The Sculpture) to The Menil Collection, Houston, and the National Gallery of Art, Washinghton, D.C. In the autumn The Coronation of Sesostris series, inspired by the legendary king of Ancient Egypt, is shown at Gagosian Gallery, New York. He spends the winter of 2001 in the Caribbean and the spring in Lexington, where he works on sculptures, photographs and on the Lepanto paintings, a dramatic representation of the navel battle fought by the Holy League of Catholic states against the Ottoman Empire, which took place in the Gulf of Corinth in 1571. The exhibition Cy Twombly: Six Paintings, Three Sculptures opens in June at Thomas Ammann Fine Art, Zurich.

The Lepanto series is presented at the 49th Venice Biennale, where Twombly is awarded the Golden Lion. During the summer and autumn months he works on paintings and sculptures in Gaeta. While in Gaeta, he receives the Constantino Nivola Prize for his sculptural work. An exhibition of photographs opens at Schimer/Mosel Gallery in Munich, while the Lepanto series is shown in New York at the Gagosian Gallery and in Munich at the Alte Pinakothek. Other solo exhibitions are held at Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh; and at the Daros Collection, Zurich (Audible Silence: Cy Twombly at Daros). Twombly spends part of the winter 2003 in St-Barthelemy, returning in the spring to Lexington, where he creates the Gathering of Time series. These new works are shown at Gagosian Gallery, New York, in May. In July he travels to St Petersburg, where on the occasion of the three hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the State Hermitage Museum present the retrospective show Cy Twombly at the Hermitage: Fifty Years of Works on Paper. The exhibition travels over the next year to the Graphische Sammlung, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the Serpentine Gallery, London.

2004 -2011
Twombly spends part of the winter season in the Seychelles, in Paris and in London. Back in Gaeta, he works on ten paintings that are shown in London in May-June, on the occasion of the opening of the new Gagosian Gallery (Ten Paintings and a Sculpture). In June a new exhibition opens at Thomas Ammann Fine Art, Zurich. During the winter and early spring he works in Gaeta on a new series of eight Untitled (Bacchus) paintings which are later shown at Gagosian Gallery, in New York. The Hermitage exhibition Fifty Years of Works on Paper travels in January 2005 to the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, then opens in May at the Menil Collection, Houston. An archive to catalogue Twombly's works on paper is established in Rome.

In the autumn he stays in Lexington working on sculptures. The show Bacchus, Psilax, Mainomenos opens at Gagosian Gallery, New York, in November. Twombly spends January and February in the Seychelles and the spring months in Gaeta, still focusing primarily on sculptures. In April, an exhibition of recent sculptures opens at Munich's Alte's Pinakothek. He is awarded the McKim Prize at the American Academy in Rome. He travels to Syros, Greece, in the summer and returns to Lexington in the autumn, where he creates a new series of paintings. In November and December he works on the Blooming Paintings in Gaeta. In June 2007, the Blooming Paintings are shown at Collection Yvon Lambert in Avignon (Cy Twombly: Blooming: A Scattering of Blossoms and Other Things). In the same month, a group of paintings produced in Lexington the previous autumn is exhibited at Thomas Ammann Fine Art Gallery, Zurich, on the occasion of its thirtieth anniversary.

Cy Twombly. Gaeta, 2007

The artist spends the summer in Abruzzo and in Gaeta, working on paintings. In September he goes to Paris to oversee his ceiling commission for the Salle des Bronzes, Musee du Louvre, then returns to spend the autumn in Lexington, Virginia. In November the Blooming Paintings are shown at Gagosian Gallery in New York. Gagosian Gallery inaugurates a new gallery in Rome on 15 December with an exhibition of Twombly's Three Notes from Salalah. During winter 2008 Twombly spends most of his time in Gaeta, working on a major new cycle of paintings on the theme of Roses. In March, he makes trips to to Maastricht and San Moritz. In April he celebrates his eightieth birthday in Ponza. The Tate Modern retrospective opens in June; it travels to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and the Galleria Nazional d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome, later in 2009. Twombly's Lepanto paintings go on display at the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. In the spring of 2010, after several years in the making, Twombly's monumental ceiling painting, measuring nearly four-hundred square metres, was inaugurated at the Salle des Bronzes in the Louvre, Paris. Recent exhibitions include "Cy Twombly: The Natural World, Selected Works 2000-2007," The Art Institute of Chicago 2009 and "Sensations of the Moment," the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, 2009. Twombly and Poussin: Arcadian Painters - Dulwich Picture Gallery June 29 - September 25, 2011

Cy Twombly dies in hospital in Rome at the age of 83. Cy Twombly (Edwin Parker Twombly Jr), artist, born 25 April 1928; died 5 July 2011.