Nini’s Painting, 1971
Information about the artwork
- MaterialEmulsion paint, crayon, colored pencil and pencil on canvas
- Dimensions250.3 x 300.4 cm
- Year of acquisition1995
- Inventory numberUAB 451
- On viewCurrently not exhibited
- Copyright© Cy Twombly Foundation
- Audioguide
More about the artwork
In “Nini’s Painting” from 1971, Twombly’s gesture increasingly approaches the state of writing. At times, individual letters and words can almost be discerned between the lines, such as the names Cy and Nini, but there is no clear linguistic connection. The painting is an homage to Nini Pirandello, the wife of Twombly’s gallerist Plinio De Martiis, who committed suicide in 1971. Grief is all too often an agonising state in which one wants to speak without being able to. And so Twombly's act of painting was a constant overwriting, an attempt to express himself in the knowledge that he would fail. Twombly's marks seem to retreat into this state of limbo. They leave behind a palimpsest of remembering and forgetting, of abundance and depletion.
