Cy Twombly, paintings and drawings, 1954-1977: Whitney Museum of American Art, April 10-June 10, 1979

Director's Forward: It is a privilege for the Whitney Museum of American Art to present a major retrospective of the work of Cy Twombly. Though he has chosen to live in Rome for the last twenty-two years and has been greatly influenced by a proximity to ancient cultures, Twombly's originality expresses the creative spirit of the American pioneer. Named for his father, a major league baseball player in the 1920s, he was born and raised in Virginia, where leadership and rebellion are ssociated with a heritage of manners and discipline. As Twombly has absorbed a sense of the ancient past, he has made the rewards a contribution to the present with a new classical language for contemporary American art.