Stories of History

In 2007 and 2010 respectively, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao acquired the pictorial series Nine Discourses on Commodus (1963) by Cy Twombly and Mrs Lenin and the Nightingale (2008) by Georg Baselitz. Both are considered masterpieces, not only within the artists’ individual oeuvres but in the larger context of European painting.

Stories of History compares and contrasts these two major works by two contemporary artists who appropriate history in order to introduce new angles or reinterpretations of reality. Both works feature personal narratives that revisit historical figures from two chronologically distant periods, using a language charged with gesturality yet unrelated to the traditional Expressionisms.