One of the greatest masters of contemporary art, Cy Twombly (Lexington, Virginia, 1928 - Rome, 2011) returns to Venice – where he was present at the Biennale no less than five times from 1964, the last being in 2001 when he won the Golden Lion – with a major monographic exhibition curated by Julie Sylvester and Philip Larratt-Smith.

The exhibition, organised in collaboration with the Cy Twombly Foundation of New York and with the scientific coordination of Gabriella Belli and exhibition layout by Daniela Ferretti, arrives at Ca’ Pesaro like a precious cameo: the unseen testimony of a work that is regenerated every time it appears – in an emotional continuum – and of an artist who never ceases to amaze “for the extraordinary visual intelligence and acute sensitivity to all forms of physical, natural and artistic beauty”, writes Philip Larratt-Smith in the catalogue (published by Damiani).

CY Twombly Paradise offers an initiatory journey through six decades of Twombly’s production as painter and sculptor and of his tireless creativity, and which in Venice: a new perspective of the mysteries and revelations of Twombly’s art.

The work of Cy Twombly, who died in 2011, revolves around the universal themes of love, art, beauty and death, but the particularity of his artistic vision, his perspective of the world offers an extraordinarily original interpretation. Like many of his generation, Twombly reacted against the dominant trend in painting of Abstract Expressionism, but unlike others, who opted for a Pop or Neo-dadaist vision, he established a synthesis between the legacies and established techniques of gestural abstraction and the tradition of European painting.

The innovative use of language, the wide range of allusions and references open his work to history, literature and philosophy, blurring the boundaries between painting, drawing and writing, while at the same time preserving a high degree of abstraction.