Blooming, A Scattering of Blossoms and Other Things
June 5 – October 14, 2007
Cy Twombly has given the Collection Lambert a landmark exhibition. The last opportunity to see his work in France was the retrospective of works on paper at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, in 2001, previously presented at the Ermitage in Saint-Petersburg. Twombly produced a whole exhibition specially for Avignon, naturally working with the special light of Provence, but also taking into account the constraints of the building, the classic design of the entrance to the house, the large French windows letting in the summer sunshine, and the typically neo-classical symmetry of the ground floor rooms leading off left and right in sequence.
The choice of theme could hardly be more joyful, like a musical symphony with a ‘score’ made up of sometimes vivid and powerful, sometimes garish and brash colours, completely free from painterly convention, as reflected in the title “Blooming: A Scattering of Blossoms and Other Things”, a reference to the blooming and scattering of life itself.
No less than six huge paintings on wooden panels 5.5 metres long and three measuring 2.5 metres will be hung in the museum. As an introduction to these declamatory paintings, four small canvases set into niches will frame the 18th century entrance to the house.