Details
Cy Twombly (1928-2011)
Dionysus
signed with the artist's initials and dated 'CT.79' (lower right); titled 'DIONYSUS' (lower center)
watercolor, crayon, graphite and paper collage on paper
39 1/4 x 27 5/8 in. (99.6 x 70.1 cm.)
Executed in 1979.
Provenance
Heiner Bastian, Berlin
Sammlung Marx, Berlin
Diego Cortez, New York
Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London
Acquired from the above by the present owner, 1996
Literature
Y. Lambert, Cy Twombly, Catalogue Raisonnè des oeuvres sur papier, Volume VII, 1977-1982, p. 72, no. 68 (illustrated).
N. D. Roscio, ed., Cy Twombly Drawings: Catalogue Raisonnè Volume 6, 1972-1979, Munich, 2016, p. 263, no. 268 (illustrated).
Exhibited
Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie and Mönchengladbach, Städtisches Museum Abteiberg, Beuys - Rauschenberg - Twombly - Warhol. Sammlung Marx, March-April 1982, p. 155, no. 97 (illustrated).
New York, Pace Gallery, Cy Twombly, Works on Paper, January 1988, n.p., pl. 18 (illustrated).

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Joanna Szymkowiak
Joanna Szymkowiak

Lot Essay

“Twombly’s work, and our response to it, involves acts of faith in this modern experiment to renew a basic magic of art, immemorial,  endlessly uncertain, and always open to discovery. For all the complex linguistic structure of his aesthetic and the rich web of his references, what his achievement may ultimately depend upon most heavily is the power he has drawn from within himself and from so many enabling traditions, to isolate in a particularly raw and unsettled fashion that primal electricity of communication, in his apparently simplest acts of naming, marking, and painting.”
 
Kirk Varnedoe, Cy Twombly A Retrospective, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1994, p. 51.

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