| Three’s a crowd … Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly and Robert Rauschenberg. |
Lust, heartbreak and suggestive sculpture: was this art's greatest love triangle?
For Valentine’s Day, we look at how the interweaving passions of three American greats – Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg – were as mesmerising as their art
My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal
Friday 12 February 2021
T
he sensual American graffitist Cy Twombly, who lived in Italy from the late 1950s until his death in 2011, lushly inscribed his epic canvases with love poetry – Shelley and Keats, Cavafy and Catullus. The work was like an abstract expressionist Valentine’s card. He even used hearts and roses in his work, as well as penises, breasts, anuses and vaginas. But who was his Valentine?