Cy Twombly famous quotes

04-18-2025

I sit for two or three hours and then in 15 minutes I can do a painting, but that's part of it. You have to get ready and decide to jump up and do it; you build yourself up psychologically, and so painting has no time for brush. Brush is boring, you give it and all of a sudden it's dry, you have to go. Before you cut the thought, you know?
-- Cy Twombly

#Cutting #Two #Giving
I had my freedom and that was nice
-- Cy Twombly

#Nice
When I work, I work very fast, but preparing to work can take any length of time.
-- Cy Twombly

#Art #Length #Preparing
It's instinctive in a certain kind of painting...It's like a nervous system. It's not described, it's happening. The feeling is going on with the task. The line is the feeling, from a soft thing, a dreamy thing, to something hard, something arid, something lonely, something ending, something beginning.
-- Cy Twombly

#Lonely #Feelings #Tasks
I wouldâ€™ve liked to have been Poussin, if Iâ€™d had a choice, in another time
-- Cy Twombly

#Choices
I work in waves, because I'm impatient. Because of a certain physicality, of lack of breath from standing. It has to be done and I do take liberties I wouldn't have taken before.
-- Cy Twombly

#Taken #Liberty #Done
Graffiti is linear and it's done with a pencil, and it's like writing on walls. But in my paintings it's more lyrical.
-- Cy Twombly

#Wall #Writing #Done
And we who have always thought of happiness climbing, would feel the emotion that almost startles when happiness falls.
-- Cy Twombly

#Fall #Climbing #Emotion
I love my sculptures, and I was lucky I had them for 50 years because no one would look at them and I really liked having them around.
-- Cy Twombly

#Years #Lucky #Looks
I hate roses. Don't you? It's all right if you can hide them in a cutting garden, but I think a rose garden is the height of ick.
-- Cy Twombly

#Hate #Cutting #Garden
I never really separated painting and literature.
-- Cy Twombly

#Literature #Painting
Paint is something that I use with my hands and do all those tactile things. I really don't like oil because you can't get back into it, or you make a mess. It's not my favourite thing... pencil is more my medium than wet paint.
-- Cy Twombly

#Hands #Oil #Use

You may also like:

Andy Warhol
Artist
Anselm Kiefer
Artist
Antoni Tapies
Painter
Claude Monet
Painter
Ellsworth Kelly
Painter
Franz Kline
Painter
Gerhard Richter
Visual Artist
Helen Frankenthaler
Painter
Jackson Pollock
Artist
Jasper Johns
Artist
Jean Dubuffet
Painter
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Artist
Joan Mitchell
Painter
Joseph Beuys
Artist
Keith Haring
Visual Artist
Mark Rothko
Artist
Robert Motherwell
Painter
Robert Rauschenberg
Painter
Sigmar Polke
Painter
Willem de Kooning
Artist