Cy Twombly

Cy Twombly was born in 1928 in Lexington, Virginia, and died in 2011 in Rome, Italy. He studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1947–49); the Art Students League, New York (1950–51); and Black Mountain College, North Carolina (1951–52). In the mid 1950s, following travels in Europe and Africa, he emerged as a prominent figure among a group of artists working in New York that included Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. In 1959, Twombly settled permanently in Italy. In 1968, the Milwaukee Art Center mounted his first retrospective. This was followed by major retrospectives at the Kunsthaus Zürich (1987), travelling to Madrid, London and Paris; the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1994, travelling to Houston, Los Angeles, and Berlin) and the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich (2006). In 1995, the Cy Twombly Gallery opened at The Menil Collection, Houston, exhibiting works made by the artist since 1954. The European retrospective “Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons” opened at the Tate Modern, London in June 2008, with subsequent versions at the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Museum of Modern Art in Rome in 2009. Recent solo 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); “Cy Twombly Tribute: A Scattering of Blossoms & Other Things,” Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2011); “Cy Twombly: Sculpture,” Museum of Modern Art, New York (2011–12); “Cy Twombly: Sculptures,” Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia (2013); “Cy Twombly,” Diocesan Museum, Gaeta, (2014); “Cy Twombly: Paradise,” Museo Jumex, Mexico City (2014); “Cy Twombly: Treatise on the Veil,” The Morgan Library & Museum, New York (2014).