May 16–October 11, 2009

The distinctive practice of Cy Twombly merges drawing, painting, writing, and symbolic gesture in the pursuit of a direct, intuitive form of expression. His inimitable visual language of scrawls, drips, and denotations is tensely balanced between abstract and pictorial impulses. The more than 30 works in the Modern Wing's Abbott Galleries inaugural exhibition speak from the artist’s enduring concern with the natural world—specifically seascape, landscape, light, and flora—themes that have become increasingly prevalent in recent years. Equal parts commanding and muscular, tentative and languorous, the new work testifies to the ongoing creative vitality of one of the greatest American artists of our time.

_{Cy Twombly. Untitled (detail), 2007. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Donald B. Marron, New York. © Cy Twombly. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery.}