Exhibition Review: Cy Twombly’s Landscape Abstractions and the Fragility of Nature

  Exhibition Review: Cy Twombly’s Landscape Abstractions and the Fragility of Nature

galleries at 980 Madison Avenue, 

On view in Gagosian’s recent exhibition, Cy Twombly’s Untitled paintings from 1981–1986, created in Bassano in Teverina, Italy, mark a profound shift in his engagement with nature and abstraction. Rendered in lush greens and layered with fluid gestures, these works evoke the sensory immediacy of earth, air, and water—an elemental trinity central to both ecological life and human experience.

The sense of light, speed, moisture change between drawings, people always putting themself connect with nature while painter using landscape as the object. The abstract way of drawing bring viewer’s curiosity and memories out of box. As one moves through the series, the quatrefoil-shaped frames act like portals, subtly altering the viewer’s perspective with each step. The spatial relationship between the paintings mimics a journey through a landscape—not linear, but fluid and ever-changing.

The social resonance lies in the subtle commentary on humanity’s disconnection from nature. These paintings, while abstract, suggest a plea for reconnection—where the liquidity of paint mirrors the ebb and flow of natural forces that sustain life. In this way, Twombly transforms abstraction into a poetic form of environmental reflection, inviting viewers not only to see, but to feel the landscape’s fading presence in our collective consciousness.