Cycladic Statues Views

General Goods

In this period Cycladic sculpture also produces statues reaching a height up to 1.50 m. There is also'a series of figures which are three dimensional. The best examples are the musicians, the seated or standing male figures playing musical instruments. In this flourishing period of Cycladic sculpture and Cycladic civilisation in general, the diffusion of the figurines throughout the Aegean is wide either through export or through local manufacture.

The Cycladic figurines are unlike any art produced by the cultures of their time. The statues are restrained in expression and refined in execution. Their simplistic lines vividly tell the story behind the figure, whether sitting or standing. Typically the figures are frontal in stance and geometric in style with the arms folded above the belly. They are designed to be viewed frontally only and not from the sides. Because most of them have feet pointed downward, they may be designed to lay flat rather than stand vertically.

Indeed, more than half of all documented Cycladic figurines in museums and collections worldwide were found on Keros. Now, excavations by a Greek-British archaeology team have unearthed a cache of prehistoric statues e— all deliberately broken t— that they hope will help solve the Keros riddle.

However, some experts think the islanders' religion was probably built round a fertility cult tied to the mother-goddess of Neolithic times, whose worship survived in various forms until Christian times in the Greco-Roman world. The Cycladic statues, many depicting pregnant women, may have played a part in such beliefs, and their deliberate destruction would have been a ritual act.