In tribute to the late great Cy Twombly, Gagosian Gallery is to present his last paintings and one hundred of his photographs, ranging from early studio impressions from the 1950s to a group of landscape subjects that he took in St Barths last year.
Since 2008, major exhibitions of Twombly’s intimate photographs have been held at FOAM Amsterdam, Museum Brandhorst, Munich and the Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels; however this is the first time that the lesser known aspect of his oeuvre has been presented in such depth in the U.S.
The eight untitled paintings are closely related to the Camino Real group that inaugurated Gagosian Paris in 2010. The inimitable, exuberant paintwork and bold, intense colors typify the freedom with which Twombly worked, never restricted to a single reference. Even in the face of his impending death, their elegiac power, vivid palette, and ardent gestures pulse with the energies of the new.
Twombly remains one of the world’s most revered contemporary artists, whose central and ongoing relevance to contemporary art is attested to by a stream of recent survey exhibitions in leading international institutions. Since the opening of the first Gagosian Gallery in New York in the mid-eighties, Twombly has been a cornerstone of the gallery. He made many exhibitions there over the last twenty-five years, each one as surprising and memorable as the last, from the Bolsena Paintings (1990) to The Coronation of Sesostris (2001) to Lepanto (2002), Bacchus (2007), and The Rose (2009). Ten Sculptures and a Painting (2003), Three Notes for Salalah (2007), Leaving Paphos Ringed with Waves(2009), and Camino Real (2010) inaugurated new galleries in London, Rome, Athens, and Paris respectively.
After Los Angeles, this exhibition will travel to Gagosian Gallery locations in Hong Kong, London, and New York through 2012.
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