Cy Twombly - Catalogue Raisonne Of Sculpture Vol 1 1946-1997

Since his large retrospective in New York and Berlin in 1995, if not earlier, Cy Twombly has been known to the general public. In the 50ies Twombly (1928-2011) broke with his New York companions Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. Living in the seclusion of a palazzo in Rome since 1957, he has devoted himself to his individual, unconventional art, using the reductionistic language of modern art and yet without any reservations about using the grand gestures of mythology, literature and history. The poetical-mythical components of his painting also feature in his sculptures, which Twombly first released for comprehensive publication in the form of this book. He combined everyday objects such as crates, palm leaves, artificial flowers, nails, door knobs, wooden blocks, willow canes, pieces of string and paper with white painted sculptures: their everyday identity and reality are still apparent, and yet they are simultaneously transferred to a state devoid of time and change. Cy Twombly’s sculptures are reminiscent of the hieratical figures in Egyptian or Mesopotamian art that become metaphors of a dimension beyond time and space. Similar to Ovid in his Metamorphoses, Cy Twombly transformed objects, imparting to them a mythical sense: the texture of a palm leaf becomes the flight of a bird in Cycnus; nails and flowers evoke the first flush of dawn or the Russian revolution ship in Aurora. Twombly’s sculptures are mythological poems, playful, witty and at times even sarcastic. The introductory essay was written by the American art writer and philosopher, Arthur C. Danto.