"APPROACHING CY OR: LE QUATTRO STAGIONI"

A project on Cy Twombly, my favorite artist. I discovered him only in 2009 when there was an exhibition going on in Vienna. Since then, my passion about his art and his personality grew steadily, until I felt the need to see the house where he had been living in Gaeta, in the South of Italy. Not only finding it was an adventure, but the real adventure began when trying to get to know the hidden personality of this artist among the inhabitants of this beautiful place! My main-concern first was to make a photographic project on the American artist at the place he lived. But then it turned out to become something much bigger, much more important and wider...

But coming back to the photographic aspect, I found out that the only way to make see the differences between the Four Seasons was the light. Which made this task double as interesting, as Light is the most important tool for any photographer! From the artistic point of view, I wanted to create pictures that are inspired by Cy's wonderful works of art. Of course no copies, but I wanted them to be more a homage to this great artist. And one of the most important elements was handwriting. This again made it double as interesting for me, as handwriting is something that I really like a lot and that is very important to me. As important was the choice of text. I didn't want to simply copy some citations that Twombly had used in his various pictures, but a text that was my personal one. In the end the most authentic to me seemed to scan parts of the interviews that I did during my visits in Gaeta with the wonderful people I got to know there during my work and who were in one or the other way crossing Twombly's paths there.

When I finished this series of four pictures, I was astonished about myself: I finally had created a work of art which might lead the visitor to the question that I am often coming across while visiting exhibitions of artists whom I didn't know before: "Shall I first read about the works of art and then see them or the other way round?" I never found an answer to this question.... now it's your turn to decide...

Location: Gaeta
Photographer: susanne b. armberger