Merrin Gallery: Masterpieces of Cycladic Art
According to Edward Merrin, one half of the father-son duo (the other half is gallery director-turned-philanthropist Samuel Merrin) that heads the directive staff at the Merrin Gallery, ancient art is symbolic of “man's triumphal achievements over the millennia.” Ancient art from the Cyclades, whose empire reached its height around the third millennia BC, and whose erasure from the earth's surface was complete by the second. Although the ancient culture from the Cyclades has not survived to the modern age, its art has.
The Merrin Gallery's landmark show, Masterpieces of Cycladic Art, showcased a collection of some of the best-preserved and impressive artifacts from the ancient Cyclades that were to be found throughout the world. The Cyclades are the source for some of the world's most pivotal artistic creations. Inspired by the pure, white, plethora of marble scattered along the Cycladic coast, ancient artisans worked to produce some of the most stunningly basic, dazzlingly simple, and exceptionally lucid to be produced by the mortal hand in all of human history.
The Merrin Gallery's Masterpieces of Cycladic Art collection is compiled from private collections, major museums like the Brooklyn Museum, and the Merrin Gallery's own permanent collection.
Small, marble idols were unearthed in the Cyclades within the last hundred years. They were small, they were bare, and they told a story that had remained untold for millennia. Whether the idols were meant to appease fertility gods, to serve as part of a primeval funerary rite, or any other of countless possible scenarios, the sublimity, repetition and intrinsic beauty of the figures made it clear to historians and archaeologists alike that these marble idols were important, that they were vital, and that their story needed to be told.
ANATOLIAN 'STARGAZER'
Kilia Type
Chalcolithic or Early Bronze Age, CA. 3000-2500 BC
White Marble
Height: 6 ¾ inches (17.2 cm)
Ex-Collections: Nelson A. Rockefeller;
Loaned to the Museum of Primitive Art (62.33);
Private Texas Collection
CYCLADIC FEMALE
FIGURE
Early Spedos Variety
Early Cycladic II,
CA. 2600-2500 BC
White Marble
Height 10 11/16 inches (27.1 CM)
The Merrin Gallery
HEAD OF A CYCLADIC
FIGURE
Early Spedos Variety
Early Cycladic II, CA. 2600-2500 BC
White Marble with Red and Black Pigment
Height: 8 11/16 inches (22 cm)
Ex-Collection: Mr. and Mrs. A. Leuthold; Private
Collection
Pablo Picasso, arguably the most influential artist of
the modern age, once remarked while cradling in his hands
one of his own “Mother Goddess” idols, inspired by the
simplicity of the ancient Cyclades:
“There was once a little man in the Cyclades. He thought he was making the great Goddess, but what he made was not a God, but a piece of sculpture. Nothing was left of his life. Nothing was left of his kind of God. But this is left. Because he wanted to make a piece of sculpture. A kind of magic power.”