I Never Knew Cy Twombly - Ewa Monika Zebrowski

Bassano in Teverina

The celebrated artist, Cy Twombly, chose to live between Italy and the United States. He lived in Rome, Bassano in Teverina, and Gaeta for over 50 years. Almost every year he would return to Lexington,Virginia where he was born, and set up a studio and paint.

It was Italy, however, that nurtured his imagination and his spirit. In March 2015 his son, Alessandro, took me to the house in Bassano in Teverina where he had lived. A kind of pilgrimage. We arrived in a small town, a large stone house on a hill. We entered in silence. I was not sure what I would find or how I would feel to walk through the rooms, his son by my side. I was moved to see the empty spaces where Cy Twombly had lived and worked. I could feel the residue of time, and the loss. Bassano in Teverina is about absence and loss, and the ephemeral nature of being.

XX Bassano in Teverina

Old stones tell secrets

(of other times) when

voices drifted like whispers

in the stone house of many floors and

endless views.

Now, there is silence,

in this house

of endless views and many floors.

Silence,

that echoes, and

remains.