On the 8th of July the exhibition of the works of Cy Twombly, by now, with recorded auction prices of $3 million and up perhaps the most fashionable abstract painter alive, has opened in the Hermitage.

Born in Lexington, Virginia, in 1928, Twombly belongs to the generation of American artists that followed Abstract Expressionism and had to contend, Oedipus-like, with its influence; he is the Third Man, a shadowy figure, beside that vivid duumvirate of his friends Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. But unlike them, he made his life in Europe. After some gestation in one of the wombs of the postwar American avant-garde, Black Mountain College in North Carolina, he went to Italy in 1957 and has lived there ever since.

His work is cryptic, devoted to nuance and practically impossible to reproduce. No color plate conveys the way those little scribbles and blots can keep the whitish-blond surface of a big Twombly in coherent tension. Since reproduction creates reputation, this put his work at a disadvantage. Besides, Twombly could not have had less to do with the direction American art in the '60s took toward Minimalism and the iconic blare of Pop Art; being an expatriate counted against him in a New York art world saturated with cultural chauvinism. He had sided with the beautiful Italian losers, against history.

The exhibition will be on display in the General Staff building till the 1st of September.

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