Cy Twombly 'Naumachia' Lithograph

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This LITHOGRAPH featuring Naumachia (1992) by Cy Twombly was produced in 2002, in conjunction with Cy Twombly: Lepanto—an exhibition of … Read more This LITHOGRAPH featuring Naumachia (1992) by Cy Twombly was produced in 2002, in conjunction with Cy Twombly: Lepanto—an exhibition of a painting in twelve parts first shown at the 49th Biennale di Venezia in the summer of 2001—at Gagosian, 555 West 24th Street, New York. The suite depicts the sixteenth-century sea battle of the combined European forces under Venetian leadership against the Ottoman invasion. Naumachia, a work in tempera and pencil on paper, is titled after the mock naval battles staged for entertainment in ancient Rome.

Edwin Parker "Cy" Twombly Jr. was an American painter, sculptor and photographer. He belonged to the generation of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Twombly is said to have influenced younger artists such as Anselm Kiefer, Francesco Clemente, Julian Schnabel and Jean-Michel Basquiat. His best-known works are typically large-scale, freely-scribbled, calligraphic and graffiti-like works on solid fields of mostly gray, tan, or off-white colors. His later paintings and works on paper shifted toward "romantic symbolism", and their titles can be interpreted visually through shapes and forms and words. Twombly often quoted poets such as Stéphane Mallarmé, Rainer Maria Rilke and John Keats, as well as classical myths and allegories, in his works. Examples of this are his Apollo and The Artist and a series of eight drawings consisting solely of inscriptions of the word "VIRGIL". See less