Cy Twombly — Sperlonga 1959 — Karsten Greve Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

In 6 days: September 12 → November 10, 2026

Galerie Karsten Greve presents an exhibition devoted to a pivotal body of work in Cy Twombly’s career: the Sperlonga Drawings, created during the summer of 1959. Bringing together a rare group of works on paper, the exhibition revisits a decisive moment when, shortly after settling in Italy, the artist developed a new relationship to space, landscape, and memory.

Located between Rome and Naples, the village of Sperlonga held a lasting fascination for Twombly. The Mediterranean light, the dazzling whiteness of the sea and the buildings, as well as the nearby remains of Emperor Tiberius’s villa, nourished his imagination. In this landscape steeped in history, where echoes of antiquity seem ever present, the artist found fertile ground for the emergence of a renewed visual language.

The drawings produced during this period move away from descriptive representations of landscape in favor of a freer and more fragmentary evocation. Lines, numbers, circles, and scattered signs interact with vast areas of untouched paper, while painterly gestures appear in subtle touches. The horizon is never depicted directly, yet it remains constantly present, suggested through light, emptiness, and the rhythm of graphic interventions.

These works foreshadow many of the major directions that would define Twombly’s later practice. They reflect his profound interest in landscape, which he regarded as a sensory experience as much as a repository of history, forms, and myths. Through the Sperlonga Drawings, one can trace a foundational moment in the development of an oeuvre that would leave a lasting mark on the art of the second half of the twentieth century.