Twombly Foundation to Exhibit Rare Rauschenberg Works at Gagosian

The Cy Twombly Foundation will exhibit six works by Robert Rauschenberg at Gagosian gallery next week, marking an opportunity to see these rarely exhibited pieces, all from the early part of the artist’s career.

Among the works headed to Gagosian’s new 980 Madison Avenue location on New York’s Upper East Side is a 1950 assemblage partially composed of twigs and glass. It’s an unusual piece, according to Gagosian, whose release touts the assemblage as one of the few remaining ones from a period in which Rauschenberg destroyed much of his output.

That piece will go on view at the gallery on April 25 alongside a 1950 cyanotype produced with Susan Weil, who was then Rauschenberg’s wife; a ca. 1952 work from the “Black Painting” series; and a 1961 assemblage composed of a lightbulb, a stool, metal, and wire.

A Gagosian representative declined to comment on whether the works brought to the gallery by the Cy Twombly Foundation were available for sale. First-class Rauschenberg works tend to command top dollar at auction, where a silk-screened work from 1964 sold for $88.8 million at Christie’s in 2019.

Twombly and Rauschenberg were close friends; at one point during the 1950s, they were romantically involved. They were two of the artists surveyed in “Five Friends,” an acclaimed exhibition that debuted last year at the Museum Brandhorst in Munich, Germany, that presented Twombly, Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Merce Cunningham, and John Cage not just as pioneering postwar artists but also as queer men whose sexuality may have been key to their work.

The Gagosian exhibition will be on view alongside a show of works by Marcel Duchamp, whose sculptures rarely visit commercial galleries.

“On their own, these early works by Robert Rauschenberg confirm his importance as one of the most influential artists of American postwar era,” dealer Larry Gagosian told ARTnews in an email. “But when you add the fact that they were owned by Cy Twombly, and you juxtapose them with the genius of Marcel Duchamp, something really exciting happens.”