Cy Twombly is the third contemporary artist bestowed with the honor of being commissioned for a work in the Louvre Museum -after Anslem Kiefer’s monumental painting in 2007, and François Morellet’s Lefuel Staircase window installations this year.  The Louvre’s practice of inviting works by living artists continues with Twombly’s new painted ceiling in one of the museum’s biggest gallery spaces –the 350m² Salle des Bronzes.

View of the Louvre’s new Salle des Bronzes ceiling by Cy Twombly

The ceiling differs from Twombly’s usual style characterized by a graffiti influence.  He designed the work to complement the large rectangular space containing the museum’s Classical bronze sculpture.  The result is a vibrant blue ceiling decorated with yellow, off-white, and blue spherical orbs and the names of the seven foremost Greek sculptors from the fourth century –including Praxiteles, Polyclitus, and Lysippus.  The last artist asked to do a Louvre ceiling was Georges Braque in 1953, in a room which leads to Twombly’s new ceiling.

Cy Twombly with his ceiling at the Louvre in Paris, on March 23, 2010

Cy Twombly, originally from Virginia where he was born in 1928, has lived in Italy since the 1950s and has often traveled to Greece, as his work is strongly influenced by ancient Greek history and mythology.  His work for the Salle des Bronzes is a nice synthesis of his contemporary abstract style rooted in antiquity.

Opens March 25, 2010.

Louvre Museum, Sully Wing, 1^st floor, Salle des Bronzes, Paris, France.

Tags: contemporary artist, Cy Twombly, Louvre, Louvre Museum, modern art, painter, Twombly