The Cycladic Figurines: Abstract Art of the Third Millennium BC

In the early twentieth century, pioneering modern artists like Constantin Brâncuși, Amedeo Modigliani, and Pablo Picasso stunned the art world with a radical new style. They stripped away centuries of realistic detail, reducing the human form to its barest, most essential geometric shapes. The world called it avant-garde. But what these artists had actually done was rediscover a design language that had been perfected five thousand years earlier . During the Early Bronze Age (c. 3200–2000 BCE),