Lepanto, panel 2 - Cy Twombly

A striking abstract work from Cy Twombly's 2001 Lepanto series, featuring gestural boat-like forms and fluid paint drips on a pale blue ground.

This work is the second panel in a series of twelve paintings by Cy Twombly, created for the Venice Biennale in 2001. The series depicts the 1571 Battle of Lepanto, a naval conflict between the Holy League and the Ottoman Empire. Twombly approaches this historical subject through abstraction rather than literal representation. He uses a pale, atmospheric blue ground to suggest the sea, upon which he places gestural, boat-like forms.

The composition relies on the tension between controlled line work and the fluid, gravity-driven drips of paint. The vertical streaks of orange, yellow, and red descend from the dark, scribbled shapes, evoking the violence and fire of naval combat. Twombly employs a calligraphic mark-making technique that prioritises speed and spontaneity, characteristic of his mature style. The forms appear to drift across the surface, creating a sense of movement that mirrors the chaos of a maritime engagement.

Twombly lived in Italy for much of his career, and his work frequently engages with Mediterranean history and mythology. In this series, he avoids the traditional tropes of history painting. Instead, he focuses on the emotional and sensory experience of the event. The repetition of the boat motifs across the twelve panels creates a narrative rhythm, tracking the progression of the battle from its initial stages to the final aftermath. The work demonstrates his interest in the intersection of text, sign, and gesture, where the act of painting becomes a record of the artist's physical presence. By stripping away the specific details of the ships and the combatants, Twombly allows the viewer to focus on the raw energy and the tragic nature of the conflict, rendered through a palette that shifts from light to dark as the series unfolds.