Description

Dr Reiner Speck is a distinguished physician and one of the most prominent bibliophiles of our time. Over more than six decades, he has built an unparalleled collection of antiquarian literature, including world-famous collections of Renaissance poet and scholar Petrarch and French novelist Marcel Proust. However, Speck's passion for collecting extends beyond books. Since the late 1960s, he has also been deeply committed to acquiring artists' books and contemporary art. His extensive collection of works on paper by the American artist Cy Twombly (1928- 2011) is especially noteworthy. This collection includes drawings from the 1950s to the early 1980s, prints, multiples, photographs, and artists' books, and reflects a profound and decades-long intellectual engagement with Twombly's work. The connection between Dr Speck and Twombly began around 1970, when the two met in front of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. Speck had traveled to Rome specifically to meet the artist and to ask him to sign a 1957 drawing he had acquired two years earlier in Cologne, and which is on view in this exhibition. This meeting marked the beginning of a deep friendship.