Cy Twombly

Galerie Karsten Greve presents an exhibition dedicated to one of the most decisive bodies of work in Cy Twombly’s oeuvre: the Sperlonga Drawings, created in 1959. Bringing together a rare group of works on paper, the exhibition revisits the summer of 1959, when the artist, recently settled in Italy, stayed in the village of Sperlonga on the coast of Lazio. During this pivotal period, Twombly produced around thirty works that marked a major turning point in his artistic practice.

Nestled between Rome and Naples, Sperlonga is an emblematic place that held a profound fascination for Twombly. The artist was especially captivated by its Mediterranean light, describing the sea as “white three-quarters of the time”.

The Sperlonga Drawings introduce a new conception of pictorial space into Cy Twombly’s work. The horizon is never explicitly depicted, yet it is constantly suggested; a few graphic interventions, passages of paint or broad expanses of untouched paper are enough to evoke the brilliance of sunlight on water and the vastness of the landscape. Twombly experiments with material, applying paint in thick touches or delicate impasto.

The understanding of landscape and its translation into images are fundamental aspects of Twombly’s practice. With Sperlonga, landscape becomes an experience of painting, a way of sensing space, its forms, its history and its poetry.