In tribute to the late Cy Twombly, Gagosian will present his last paintings, together with sixty-six of his photographs.
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.
The intimate photographs range from early studio impressions taken in the 1950s to a group of landscapes taken in St. Barths last year. Since 2008, major exhibitions of the artist’s photographs have been held at Foam Fotografiemuseum, Amsterdam; Museum Brandhorst, Munich; and the Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels; however, this is the first time that this lesser-known aspect of Twombly’s oeuvre has been presented in such depth in the United Kingdom.
Twombly remains one of the world’s most revered contemporary artists, whose central and ongoing relevance to the art of the present is attested to by a stream of recent survey exhibitions in leading international institutions. Since the opening of the first Gagosian in New York in the mid-1980s, 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 (2005–06), and The Rose (2009). Ten Paintings and a Sculpture (2004), Three Notes for Salalah (2008), Leaving Paphos Ringed with Waves (2009), and Camino Real (2010) inaugurated new galleries in London, Rome, Athens, and Paris respectively.
