Cy Twombly: Artemisia

This poster—designed by Cy Twombly—was published on the occasion of Artemesia, a group exhibition at Galleria Ugo Ferranti, Rome, in 1980. (The gallery, opened by Massimo d’Alessandro in 1974, quickly established itself as an important venue for European and American Conceptual art.) Twombly has rendered the exhibition information—delineated in paint and graphite in the original drawing—in his characteristically expressive, gestural style, the text appearing to drift toward the sheet’s bottom right corner. As is typical for the artist, the design is infused with energy and elusive meaning, hinting at an intimate mixture of the personal and the mythological in which script and language intersect with abstract visuality.