Author Description

Volume 6 covers the years 1972 to 1979, when Cy Twombly made several attempts to vigorously widen his artistic work. He completed his 24 Short Pieces followed by the series Natural History I and Natural History II. In both series he developed a kind of collage technique using postcards, found reproductions, and photographs--a stylistic device he integrated in his drawings and other works on paper, foreshadowing the future body of his own photographic work. In 1979 he staged the first exhibition of his sculptures premiering in Naples. Simultaneously he presented a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum in New York and made a first attempt of a catalogue raisonné of drawings with Yvon Lambert in Paris. The ambitious project, for which Roland Barthes wrote an essay, was abandoned after two volumes and was resumed several years later by the present Schirmer/Mosel edition.