Cy Twombly's "series on paper", Mushrooms and Some Trees of Italy, are portfolios that he considered a major part of his work. They are mixed media: lithograph, granolithograph, collotype, with collage and drawings.These portfolios are among the most expressive of his graphic works and involve peaceful, meditative surfaces, over which the viewer's wandering gaze is directed to a whole array of scriptural signs. Each of these mixed media prints contains the looseness and spontaniety of his painting style, and are probably the most celebrated of his print series.

Twombly, born in Lexington, Virginia in 1928, was a contemporary of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Like them, he was part of America's indigenous art movement, Abstract Expressionism. In the later 1950's he moved to Rome, Italy to live and work, where the Mediterranean culture became significant in his life and work.

Source: News, March/April 1989.