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Cy Twombly Quattro Stagione: Estate 1993-4
Cy Twombly
Quattro Stagione: Estate 1993-4
© the artist
Oil paint, acrylic paint, household paint, oil paint stick, and graphite on canvas
3141 mm x 2152 mm
Quattro Stagione: Estate 1993-4
© the artist
Oil paint, acrylic paint, household paint, oil paint stick, and graphite on canvas
3141 mm x 2152 mm
Read transcriptPatricia Smithen is Conservator of Modern and Contemporary Paintings at Tate. She has just completed a study of the paintings by Salvador Dali in the Tate Collection and is contributing to a research project on Tate's Surrealist paintings. She is a member of the Modern Paints Research Project carrying out research and treatments on the surface cleaning of acrylic paintings
Detail one:
from Quattro Stagione: Primavera
Brilliant paint colours jump out against the neutral off-white gesso layer. The texture of the canvas can be seen as the paint skips across it.
Detail two:
Cracked paint
This type of cracking occurs on these works in thick areas of paint application, as the paint dries and contracts.
Detail three:
Veils of paint
This detail illustrates how the paint has been built up in thin layers over the canvas. Different colours of liquid paint are applied, both under and over an inscription in graphite which is only partially obscured by the thin, transparent layers above it.