Twombly Foundation To Exhibit Rare Rauschenberg Works At Gagosian

The Cy Twombly Foundation will bring six early works by American artist Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) to Gagosian's new 980 Madison Avenue space on New York's Upper East Side, offering a rare look at pieces from the artist's formative years. The presentation opens on April 25 and includes an unusual 1950 assemblage partly made of twigs and glass, a cyanotype made with Susan Weil, a ca. 1952 work from the Black Painting series, and a 1961 assemblage incorporating a lightbulb, a stool, metal, and wire.

Gagosian said the 1950 assemblage is one of the few surviving works from a period when Rauschenberg destroyed much of his output, which makes the group especially notable for scholars and collectors alike. A gallery representative declined to comment on whether the works are available for sale.

The exhibition will be presented alongside works by Marcel Duchamp, whose sculptures rarely appear in commercial gallery settings. That pairing is not incidental. Rauschenberg and Duchamp occupy different generations, but both helped redraw the boundaries of what an artwork could be in the 20th century. Seen together, the two bodies of work create a sharper sense of lineage: one artist testing the material limits of postwar American art, the other laying groundwork that later artists would push even further.

The market has long reflected that stature. In 2019, a 1964 silk-screened Rauschenberg work sold for $88.8 million at Christie's, underscoring the continued demand for major examples from his career. But the works arriving at 980 Madison Avenue are not being framed primarily as trophies. Their value lies in their scarcity, their early date, and the chance to see how Rauschenberg was already moving between collage, assemblage, photography, and painting before his practice fully crystallized.

The show also carries a personal dimension. Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly were close friends and, for a time in the 1950s, romantically involved. That history gives the presentation an added layer of intimacy, especially in a gallery context where the works are being placed in dialogue with Duchamp rather than isolated as standalone market objects. For viewers, the result should be less a simple display of rare works than a compact study in postwar artistic exchange, influence, and survival.

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