American artist Cy Twombly, known for his large-scale, calligraphic scribble paintings, has died in Rome after several days of hospitalization. He was 83. The celebrated painter had been battling cancer for a number of years and died on Tuesday, according to a statement from Gagosian Gallery, which represents the artist. Still actively collaborating on forthcoming shows only months before his death, Twombly was widely considered alongside Jasper Johns and Gerhard Richter as one of the world’s most important living painters. He is survived by his son Alessandro Twombly, also a painter.
Twombly is remembered for resisting the narrow and rigid movements — Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, and Pop Art — that claimed many of his contemporaries. Blurring the line between painting and drawing, his blackboard paintings turned Jackson Pollock’s skeins of paint into furrows of pencil; his flower paintings transformed de Kooning’s expressive Ab Ex drips and strokes into brash blossoms. While contemporaries like Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg looked to American flags and newspapers for inspiration, Twombly was drawn to more ancient traditions and texts. He was fascinated by tribal art and early Roman graffiti.
The idiosyncratic artist was born in Virginia in 1928, to a father who was a pitcher for the Chicago White Sox. At 12, he began taking private art lessons with Spanish painter Pierre Daura. In 1948, he attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston before studying at the Art Students League of New York, where he met Rauschenberg. The painter encouraged Twombly to attend Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he studied with Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell and Ben Shahn. In 1952, a grant enabled Twombly to travel to North Africa, Spain, Italy, and France. The voyage would have a profound effect on the artist’s life and work. After a stint as an army cryptologist — an exercise in decoding texts that undoubtedly influenced his future scrawling style — the artist settled permanently in Italy in 1957. Many believe Gagosian opened a branch in Rome in 2007 in part to please Twombly, who lived just outside the city. The artist is remembered by friends for his flamboyant style (he was known to sport ascots and scarves), as well as for his artistic focus. After completing a painting, “I usually have to go to bed for a couple of days,” he said in a rare interview.
