In his later years, Twombly split his time between Gaeta in central Italy, and his hometown of Lexington, Virginia. Here, he captures his studio in Lexington, an old shop front that used to be an ophthalmologist practice. It has low, slanting ceilings and the folded chairs and stacked boxes make the space feel disorganised.
Shot on a Polaroid camera, enlarged to levels of distortion, and printed to give a powdery coarse grain and hazy glow, the work evidences how Twombly experimented often with overexposure and extreme colour saturation.
The prints are enlarged reproductions of the polaroids taken by Twombly, the originals of which were never released to the public and are held by the Twombly Foundation. Throughout his life Twombly carried a camera with him capturing fleeting moments in nature. Later he revisited these images and selected a number to print in small editions at Atelier Fresson, a small family run printing studio in France, near Paris which invented a dry-printing technique that produces intense colours that don’t fade.
Twombly worked closely with Michel and Jean-Francois Fresson to enlarge the Polaroid images, notably the selection of closely cropped images of flowers, landscapes and studio interiors you saw in the show.
Process-wise, they are dry-colour pigment prints and the process is kept closely guarded by the Fresson team. It produces matt prints with really deep pigment tone. The colour is very resistant to fading, being closer to a dyed piece of fabric than a photographic print. The results are beautiful and capture Twombly’s remarkable eye for composition.
Condition
Mint condition. Framed.
Provenance
Bastian Gallery, London
Authenticity
Proof of purchase from Bastian Gallery, London
