Untitled (Cy Twombly facing right in his studio) (Primary Title)

Deborah Turbeville, American, 1932 - 2013 (Artist)

1982
American
Photographs
Works On Paper
Chromogenic print
Sheet: 8 × 10 in. (20.32 × 25.4 cm)
Image: 6 3/8 × 9 7/16 in. (16.19 × 23.97 cm)
2016.507
Not on view
Turbeville became one of the first female fashion photographers in the early 1970s. Richard Avedon found her blurred style unique and served as her most important mentor.  She often sought distinctive architectural settings as backdrops for her fashion shoots and her signature style of grainy figures, posed in abandoned or decaying interiors, became iconic in the pages of fashion magazines like Vogue and Marie Clarie. Turbeville made this portrait of Cy Twombly on assignment for Vogue magazine in 1982. The article, titled "Portrait of a House – As the Artist," and this image served as the opening spread, accompanied by a quote from the artist, “This house is so much like me it is like talking to myself.” Born in Lexington, Virginia in 1928, Twombly moved to Italy in the 1950s where he eventually owned several studios including the home featured here, in the countryside in Bossano in Teverina.
Inscribed in an unidentified hand in black ink at upper right corner of verso: "SW#51404".
Gift of the Deborah Turbeville Foundation
©artist or artist’s estate

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