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Cy Twombly — “It's instinctive in a certain kind of painting, not as if you were painting an object or special things, but it's like coming through the nervous system. It's like a nervous system. It's not described, it's happening.”
Cy Twombly

“It's instinctive in a certain kind of painting, not as if you were painting an object or special things, but it's like coming through the nervous system. It's like a nervous system. It's not described, it's happening.”

The work pulses with a raw, kinetic energy, its tangle of looping graphite lines, waxy smears, and scrawled marks cascading across the paper as though recorded directly from the body's involuntary impulses. Twombly layers felt-tip pen and colored pencil into the composition, building a visual language that feels less like deliberate mark-making and more like the residue of thought itself. The result is a charged, nervous surface where gesture and sensation collapse into one another, resisting fixed meaning in favor of pure, unmediated presence.

Medium
graphite, wax crayon, felt-tip pen and colored pencil on paper

🔨 Auction Lot

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

November 11, 2013

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About this work

Cy Twombly, “It's instinctive in a certain kind of painting, not as if you were painting an object or special things, but it's like coming through the nervous system. It's like a nervous system. It's not described, it's happening.”

The work pulses with a raw, kinetic energy, its tangle of looping graphite lines, waxy smears, and scrawled marks cascading across the paper as though recorded directly from the body's involuntary impulses. Twombly layers felt-tip pen and colored pencil into the composition, building a visual language that feels less like deliberate mark-making and more like the residue of thought itself. The result is a charged, nervous surface where gesture and sensation collapse into one another, resisting fixed meaning in favor of pure, unmediated presence.

Medium
graphite, wax crayon, felt-tip pen and colored pencil on paper
Seen at
Phillips, New York, London, Hong Kong

Related themes

20th Century, Renowned Artist, Male Artist, Mixed Media, Automatic Drawing, American Artist, Abstract Expressionism, Introspective Mood, Works on Paper, Neutral Tones, Gestural Drawing

More works by Cy Twombly

Collected by

David Chen, Rocky Lindt, Art Institute of Chicago, Alex Capecelatro