- Artist
- Cy Twombly 1928–2011
- Medium
- Bronze, painted with white oil-base paint
- Dimensions
- Object: 1205 × 370 × 560 mm
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Presented by Cy Twombly Foundation 2014
- Reference
- T14085
Display caption
The poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke has inspired a number of Twombly’s sculptures and paintings. Here the last line from Rilke’s Duino Elegies is scribbled onto a piece of card at the base of the work: ‘And we who have always thought of happiness, climbing, would feel the emotion that almost startles when happiness falls’. The sculpture itself resembles a slender tree that has broken in two. The broken section leans almost vertically against the still upright other half.
Gallery label, July 2008
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