For the greatest Modern British artists, the allure of ancient western sculpture was less a retreat into the past, than a radical leap into the future. The 'art-quake' of European modernism reached London not just through the studios of Brancusi, Picasso and the galleries of Paris, but through the quiet corridors of the British Museum. The 're-discovery' of non-western art clearly had a huge influence on twentieth century British artists, but ancient western sculpture still cast a long shadow, affecting the fundamental tenets of their practice: their choice of materials, methods of creation, formal language, subject matter and iconography. While the fragmentary nature of most works that survived from classical antiquity provided an aesthetic precedent for the modern pursuit of abstraction, earlier Cycladic sculpture showcased a radical formal minimalism that reduced art to its essential elements - representing a salve to what the moderns saw as the decorative excesses of the Victorian era. Ben Nicholson was particularly inspired by Cycladic sculpture and wrote to Barbara Hepworth in 1956 that:
"…I don't know of any work which I feel goes better with mine unless it's Cycladic or some other primitive works"
• Beard, L. (ed.), Ben Nicholson Writings and Ideas, 2019, pp.69-70.
Indeed, Nicholson had some wonderful examples in his own collection, one of which - a fragmentary Cycladic Torso - is included in our exhibition. It is from this happy union of ancient and modern aesthetics that we explore the enduring resonance of ancient art from the Early Bronze Age to the Roman period, in the work of other major British artists such as Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, William Turnbull, William Staite Murray, Hans Coper and Emily Young.