Cy Twombly, 1928 - 2011

Second Voyage to Italy, 1962
In 1957, a time when the Abstract Expressionists had long since made New York the center of the artworld, he relocated to Italy, another place shattered by war and inclined to look longingly back on lost grandeur. Like the French artist Jean Dubuffet, Twombly sifted the rubble of postwar Europe to find a usable model in graffiti — crude marks that seemed as old as antiquity and in touch with the hidden currents of human affairs. In Twombly's paintings hectic scribbles and smudges of color might share the canvas with a crudely drawn word or phrase that harks back to the classical world - Herodiade, Leandro — but always dimly, a fading signal, the remnant of a broken order.

• Gertrude Stein's Masterpieces