Cy Twombly (1928)

[2003年06月10日]

 

A major exhibition takes to the road this year to celebrate US artist Cy Twombly’s works on paper. But on the auction floor, his paper works still seem to leave collectors cold.

Cy Twombly was born in Lexington, Virginia in 1928 and between 1948 and 1951 studied fine art in Boston, Washington, Lexington and New York, where he met Robert Rauschenberg. The first public exhibition of his work was held at New York’s Kootz Gallery in 1951. Twombly’s main influences at this time were Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell. However, in 1953 he travelled to Spain, North Africa, Italy and France and in 1959 settled permanently in Italy, by which time sculpture and abstract forms coated in white paint had become the main focus of his work. Turning his back on his earlier expressionist influences, he then began producing large scale works, using numbers and writing and creating his own vocabulary of signs and symbols. Making his first appearance at the Venice Biennale in 1964, Twombly has since been the subject of numerous major retrospectives, including at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris in 1988 and MoMA, New York in 1994. Fifty years of the artist’s work on paper will be celebrated this year in an exhibition at the Hermitage running from 8 July to 21 September.

Artworks at auctions

It is Cy TWOMBLY’s works on paper that most frequently appear at auctions. Drawings, water colours and paintings on paper account for 34% of works sold, more than half of them fetching less than EUR 100,000. The record for a Twombly work on paper is held by a three-part mixed media work from 1981 entitled Silex Scintillans that went for EUR 800,000 at Sotheby’s New-York on 14 November 2000. Although 80% of his prints sell for less than EUR 14,000, highly-sought after works, such as the six prints of the Roman Notes (1970) series and “Notes I-IV “(1967) can fetch more than USD 25,000. And enthusiasts can also find prints from the mid 1980s at less than EUR 2,000. Less than a dozen or so of Twombly’s paintings generally come up for auction each year. The most sought after date from the end of the 1960s. The record for a painting was fetched by a large untitled canvas consisting of rows of spirals on a neutral background that was painted in 1970 and sold at Sotheby’s on 12 November last year for USD 5.1 million.

The market places

Although 62% of Twombly’s work is sold in the US (89% by value), European art enthusiasts can find a wide range of his work at auctions in the UK, Sweden, Germany and Italy.

Buy or sell

The Artprice Index for Cy Twombly has risen by 42% in the past five years, thanks mainly to the higher prices paid for his paintings and prints. The value of his prints increased by 34% in 2002 and has risen by 77% since 1998. His paintings have never before fetched such high prices: four canvases have sold for more than USD 1 million in the past year. Bolsena, a large-scale work painted in 1969 and brought for USD 1.3 million in 1996 was resold for double the 1996 price in November 2002. Twombly’s work is generally very popular and 86% of works put up for auction find buyers. However, his drawings and water colours were less well received by collectors in 2002: the average price paid was 36% lower than in the previous year and 73% of lots coming up for auction were bought in.

    Cy Twombly (1928)Artprice Indexall media categories, base January 1997 = 100, currency: EUR   Cy Twombly (1928) Lots sold at auctions   Cy Twombly (1928) Auction sales turnover 1999-2002 / weight by country © Artprice