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The vivid and expressive brushwork that characterises Cy Twombly’s Hero and Leandro (1981-1984) also gives immediacy to the rough, choppy waters of the English Channel in Monet’s Sea at Fécamp (1881) and the crashing waves in Turner’s Wreckers, Coast of Northumberland (1834). Abstraction and ColourĪlthough the three painters belong to entirely different eras, their works share certain formal qualities, among them the use of expressive colour, the dissolution of form, gestural brushwork and a sustained interest in atmosphere. Part of what makes this confrontation so fascinating is the realisation that both paintings are more than up to it. But they are also confronted with provocative contrasts, for example in form of the juxtaposition of Cy Twombly’s five-metre canvas from the Blooming series with Monet’s water lilies from the Beyeler Foundation – an abstract red composition on a bright yellow ground set against Monet’s subtly atmospheric colour harmonies. Viewers can enjoy fairly harmonious sections, such as the Atmosphere opening sequence, which is characterised by colouristic restraint and an astonishing similarity in the way all three artists handle colour effects. Artists in DialogueĬonceived around the idea of a dialogue between individual works by the three artists, the exhibition does not seek to recount the history of abstraction – to which Turner, Monet and Twombly contributed significant chapters – but to highlight formal and motivic correspondences between paintings and within groups of works. They deal with death and the transience of life, with the changes wrought by the passage of time and with nature as a place of both tranquillity and mortal danger. Carefully judged juxtapositions bring out a multitude of correspondences between Turner, Monet and Twombly: not only in the way they experiment with colour, pushing the boundaries of painting and breaking with traditions in ways that were not always comprehensible to their contemporaries, but also in their choice of motifs and subject matter. A spacious hang allows the richly coloured canvases and works on paper to interact with each other in unexpected and fascinating ways – often from one room to the next. Focusing on their late work, it presents a selection of some seventy paintings, among them twenty by Monet alone. The exhibition now coming to Stuttgart is the first to bring the three artists together. William Turner (1775-1851), Claude Monet (1840-1926) and Cy Twombly (1928-2011) are among the most outstanding artists of the past 200 years.
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