Photogravure, a printmaking process that combines elements of aquatint etching and photography, was a prized medium among artist-photographers of the late nineteenth century, who labored over their hand-pulled prints.

Taking cues from the Dada movement and from the work of Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti, Cy Twombly (American, 1928– 2011) created poetic objects whose serene white surfaces and allusive forms seem to recall remote worlds of myth and the ancient past. After reaching an indisputable maturity in his early sculpture, created from 1946 to 1959, Twombly returned to working in three dimensions in the mid-1970s and continued to cast new works up until his passing in 2011.