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Cy Twombly Foundation Gives Tate Eight Works
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The Cy Twombly Foundation has gifted London’s Tate three paintings and five sculptures, the institution announced on Thursday. The artist, who died in 2011, expressed his wish to make the donation to the Tate prior to his death, according to the Foundation.
The large paintings are all titled Untitled (Bacchus) executed between 2006 and 2008. The are an extension of a cycle of eight works from 2005, and for which Twombly sought inspiration in Homers’ Illiad.
The sculptures are all bronze casts of quotidian objects and refuse such as the top of an olive barrel. They are much older than the paintings, having been executed between 1979 and 1991. Both the sculptures and paintings are currently on view in the Tate Modern.
Tate director Nicholas Serota said in a statement: “This is one of the most generous gifts ever to Tate by an artist or a foundation. It ranks alongside Rothko’s gift of the Seagram mural paintings in 1969 and together with Twombly’s cycle of paintings The Four Seasons 1993-5, acquired in 2002, this gives an enduring place in London to the work of one of the great painters of the second half of the twentieth century.”
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