The electric chair paintings are some of Warhol’s absolute best, but the little blue electric chair owned by Cy Twombly is a standout. The Christie’s lot description for the Twombly Foundation’s unloading of the painting extols this specific painting’s heavily inked contrast:
Housed for many years in the private collection of the artist Cy Twombly, it was this divergence between shadow and light that attracted the artist to this particular painting—an admiration bolstered by his understanding of chiaroscuro gained from his detailed study of Italian Renaissance painting undertaken during his time in his adopted homeland.
According to Christie’s Lisa Paulson’s youtube feature, Twombly & Warhol traded works “in the mid-60s,” through Leo Castelli, who also was Italian, with an admiration for settling his artists’ accounts in kind.