Coronation of Sesostris - Cy Twombly

A powerful abstract composition from Cy Twombly's 2000 cycle, featuring fluid drips of red and yellow pigment against a stark white background.

The Coronation of Sesostris is a ten-part cycle created by Cy Twombly in 2000. This specific work captures the artist's signature approach to mark-making, where the boundaries between drawing and painting blur. Twombly employs a gestural vocabulary that prioritises the physical act of application over representational accuracy. The composition features vertical drips of pigment that descend from a concentrated horizontal band of colour, suggesting a sense of gravity and temporal decay.

Twombly often looked to classical antiquity for his subject matter. In this series, he references the Egyptian pharaoh Sesostris, yet the work avoids literal depiction. Instead, it uses colour and line to evoke the atmosphere of historical narrative. The palette consists of deep reds, yellows, and purples, which bleed into the white ground of the canvas. These marks are punctuated by graphite scribbles and notations, typical of Twombly's practice of integrating written language with visual form. The work functions as a meditation on the passage of time and the fragility of historical memory.

By allowing the paint to run down the surface, Twombly introduces an element of chance into the process. The resulting drips create a rhythmic, almost musical quality across the canvas. The negative space remains largely unoccupied, which forces the viewer to focus on the density of the marks at the top of the frame. This tension between emptiness and accumulation is a defining characteristic of Twombly's later career. His work invites a slow, contemplative engagement, encouraging the observer to trace the movement of his hand across the surface. The print captures the texture of the original materials, preserving the nuances of the wax crayon and the fluidity of the acrylic paint.