Dulwich Picture Gallery, London
29 June - 25 September 2011
Gallery Road, London SE21 7AD
+44 20 8693 5254


“I would’ve liked to have been Poussin, if I’d had a choice, in another time.”
Cy Twombly

This major show explores, for the first time, the unexpected yet numerous parallels and affinities between Cy Twombly and Nicolas Poussin. In 1624 and 1957, the two artists, aged around thirty, moved to Rome. Both subsequently spent the majority of their lives in the Eternal City, and went on to become the pre-eminent painters of their day. Rather than recent exhibitions that have sought to compare and contrast old masters with contemporary artists through superficial visual appearances, this show instead juxtaposes works which may seem radically disparate in terms of style, yet ones that share deep and timeless interests. Both Poussin and Twombly were artists of prodigious talent who found in the classical heritage of Rome a life-long subject. Both spent their lives studying, revivifying and making newly relevant for their own eras antiquity, ancient history, classical mythology, Renaissance painting, poetry and the imaginary, idealised realm of Arcadia. The show consists of around thirty carefully-chosen paintings, drawings and sculptures and was developed in close collaboration with Cy Twombly himself before his death in July 2011.