Cy Twombly

Together with John Cage, Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell, Cy Twombly studied under the influential teacher and artist Josef Albers and others at Black Mountain College in the 1950s. Starting from Abstract Expressionism, he developed a pictorial language made up of line-emphasised signs and rhythmically interwoven scribblings, combined with subdued colour accentuations and blurrings. His works are usually based on monochrome light or dark surfaces, so the pictures appear extremely subdued. Twombly's repertoire of signs does not lend itself to an unambiguous interpretation; his approach is rather an approximation to the unutterable. Twombly undertook many journeys, mainly through America and the Mediterranean world, and processed the immediate sensory impressions in his works. For instance, his picture titles take up Greek mythology, thus emphasizing the archaic effect of his increasingly lyrical and literary style.