Lepanto

New Pinakothek, Munich, Germany.

Oil paint, wax, crayon, canvas.

The Battle of Lepanto is a historical event that occurred on October 7, 1571, near the coast of Greece. It was a major naval battle in which the crucial confrontation of several European countries and the Ottoman Empire was going on. Cy Twombly depicted sinking and burning ships, colliding ships and dying people in an abstract symbolic form. Many repeated simple shapes indicate the scale of the battle; the bright colours and expressive application of paint on the canvas cause a sense of the dynamics of what is happening.