Cy Twombly

Twombly's vast canvases—mythological scrawls, looping pencil lines, blotches of paint—occupy a singular position between abstract expressionism and Mediterranean classicism. His 1970 'Untitled' sold for $69.6 million in 2015. Long based in Rome and Gaeta, his practice drew on ancient poetry, archaeology, and pure automatism, producing work that feels simultaneously scholarly and urgently, irreducibly physical.