Natural History Part I, Mushrooms. 1974.
Series of 10 Lithograph in colors with heliotype, photochromic print, collages and color chalk drawing.
Bastian 42-51. All monogrammed, numbered and with the embossed Roman sheet number and the copyright note. From an edition of 88 copies. On Rives wove paper (without watermark, two with watermarks), one on Richard de Bas wove paper (with watermark). Each 76 x 56 cm (29.9 x 22 in), size of sheet.
Printed by Matthieu Studio, Zürich-Dielsdorf (each with blindstamp). Published by Heiner Bastian in Propyläen Verlag, Berlin. The complete set, except for the missing portfolio binding. Sheet II from a different copy of the same portfolio. [AW].
• Particularly attractive graphic prints with a unique character.
• One of Cy Twombly's most important graphic works.
• Twombly explores man, nature and the unknown in this work.
• Another copy of this edition is in the Tate Gallery, London.
• In 1977 and 1982 he participated in documenta 6 and 7.

PROVENANCE: Private collection Berlin.

"Only once, in 1974, did Twombly translate the collage technique into printing processes of varying complexity, in the portfolio "Natural History Part I, Mushrooms". Of some of his paintings, Twombly once said, that they were similar to collages without actually employing the technique of collage. These prints however each start with an illustration taken from a book on mushrooms. Yet rather than proceeding paradigmatically, he added to these images highly contrasting reproductions from magazines, photographs and fragments of color charts, and drew in further colored passages by hand, to create spaces of allusive and often paradoxical analogies. In all of these prints a strongly alieniating element plays a decisive role, either relating as direct paraphrase to the mushroom reproduction or distracting from it through the dominance of the collage elements."
Heiner Bastian, Cy Twombly. Das Graphische Werk 1953-1984, Munich 1984, p. 12