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Lot Essay
The present work dates from a seminal period in the artist's oeuvre. In the fall of 1955 Twombly was working on a series of black paintings, from which only one composition survives--Panorama (Bastian no. 50). In this series, Twombly introduced his first full-scale works in which idea and form are freed from any form of conventional imagery. Shortly after Twombly worked on and destroyed the black paintings, he painted the present work. Twombly's linear 'writing' was now executed on monochromatic grounds of cream, beige or gray, where the layering of lines and scratchings are luminous and spatial. As Heiner Bastian has commented:
Though seemingly contradictory, these pictures are the most impersonal archetypical manifestations while simultaneoulsy sustained by the most personal intellectual and spiritual avowals. These works... must be counted among the artist's early key works, because they so uncompromisingly preserve the animism of the sign; they do not 'deform' it pictorially but validate it as a visionary metaphor of high culture. (H. Bastian, op. cit., p. 24).
Though seemingly contradictory, these pictures are the most impersonal archetypical manifestations while simultaneoulsy sustained by the most personal intellectual and spiritual avowals. These works... must be counted among the artist's early key works, because they so uncompromisingly preserve the animism of the sign; they do not 'deform' it pictorially but validate it as a visionary metaphor of high culture. (H. Bastian, op. cit., p. 24).