Cy Twombly was born in Lexington, Virgina, on April 25, 1928. From 1947 Twombly studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and in 1949/50 at the Washington and Lee University in Lexington. In 1950 the artist went to New York, where he continued his studies at the Art Students League. Here he met Robert Rauschenberg and others. One year later Twombly transfered to the Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he was taught by Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline. Together with Rauschenberg, Twombly traveled to South America, North Africa, Spain and Italy in 1952. In the early 1950s Twombly was influenced by Kline and also, to a greater extent, by Paul Klee and he studied the possibilities of gestural-expressionistic brush strokes. He developed a sensitive web of signs, words, numbers and representational fragments. In 1955/56 Twombly taught at the Southern Seminary and Junior College in Buena Vista, Virgina, and traveled to Rome a second time in 1957. In 1960 the artist moved to Rome. That very same year he held his first exhibition at Leo Castelli's gallery. Twombly's blackboard pictures appeared during the 1960s, in which the process of writing was turned into a physical gesture. In the mid-1970s Twombly's work became more complex. He produced expressive structures with collaged sheets and various painting materials. With each painting his graphic elements became more and more dissolved in strong color whirls, culminating in the fauve-like flower paintings of the 1990s. Alongside his paintings he has produced sculptures made of simple material and scrap, which he painted white. In 1973 his first retrospective was mounted in Bern. Several important exhibitions followed, including exhibitions at the New York Whitney Museum in 1979, the Zurich 'Kunsthalle' in 1987 and the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1994. Furthermore, Twombly's contribution to art was honored by numerous awards. In 1995 the Cy Twombly Gallery opened in Houston. The museum's architecture was designed and implemented by the artist himself and architect Renzo Piano. In 2001 Twombly contributed a painting cycle in twelve parts entitled 'Lepanto' to the Venice Biennale.