Press Release
Bohemia has no banner. It survives by discretion.
- Tennessee Williams
To inaugurate the new Paris gallery, Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present ‘Camino Real,’ a group of five new paintings by Cy Twombly. Each displays the inimitable and exuberant painterly gestures and highly keyed palette typical of his recent paintings. Camino Real is a reference to the play by Tennessee Williams, first performed in New York in 1953. The cast of characters, which includes Don Quixote, Lord Byron, Casanova, Baron de Charlus, and Marguerite Gautier, represents a romantic attitude to life, ‘old knights, dreamers and troublemakers’ who retain a wild and untrammelled vision.
Twombly’s paintings have an allusive and elusive relationship with this title; they are renewed evidence of his exceptional vitality and the freedom to work with intense colors and effusive gestures that are not restricted to a single reference.
Their vivid palette relates to his previous series of ‘rose’ and ‘peony’ paintings, and contrasts with the austerity of the patinated bronze sculptures that are also part of this exhibition.
