Recent Works by Cy Twombly Showcased at the Portland Art Museum

Written by Sylvia Bangstrom Thursday, 24 November 2011 19:03

PORTLAND, OR.- Among the most important and influential artists of his generation, Cy Twombly has used mark-making and written language as the core of his artistic practice since the late 1950s. Twombly’s work has come to define an important branch of gestural abstraction that conflates painting and poetry, line and word. The exhibition showcases three recent works—two virtuosic paintings and a bronze sculpture—that illuminate the artist’s continuing engagement with process and content, the immediacy of materials, and the continuum of history.

Physical and emotional effects converge in the saturated color and vigorous surfaces of these recent paintings to suggest the transience of pleasure and life. The artist’s instinctive and intuitive brushstrokes coax poetry from the interaction of the pull of gravity and the liquidity of paint, dazzling the viewer’s senses.

Living and working in Gaeta, Italy and Lexington, Va., the 82-year-old Twombly continues to create challenging new bodies of work in painting and sculpture. His work has been the subject of two recent retrospectives at Tate Modern, London, and the Art Institute of Chicago, and is in private collections and public institutions internationally.

The Portland Art Museum is the seventh oldest museum in the United States and the oldest on the West Coast. The Museum is internationally recognized for its permanent collection and ambitious special exhibitions, drawn from the Museum’s holdings and the world’s finest public and private collections.

The Museum’s collection of more than 42,000 objects, displayed in 112,000 square feet of galleries, reflects the history of art from ancient times to today. The collection is distinguished for its holdings of art of the native peoples of North America, English silver, and the graphic arts. An active collecting institution dedicated to preserving great art for the enrichment of future generations, the Museum devotes 90 percent of its gallery space to its permanent collection.

The exhibition opens on February 6 and runs through May 16, 2010 at the Portland Art Museum. Visit : http://www.portlandartmuseum.org/

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