This first biography of Cy Twombly, one of the most important and least understood American artists of the 20th Century, explores the enduring mysteries of his work and life.

Chalk follows the life and career of the great American painter Cy Twombly, from his life as a young painter, to his expatriate years in Italy; his obsession with myths and history, to his struggle for recognition. Twombly carefully managed his own image, writing almost nothing about his life and work, and giving only a handful of interviews. Through years of scholarship and archival research, first-person interviews, and a sensitive eye to Twombly's art, Joshua Rivkin--who received a Fulbright grant to pursue this story--separates the myth from the reality to bring to life a more complicated and fascinating Twombly than we've ever known.