The Museum of Cycladic Art stages a rare encounter between Marlene Dumas’s psychologically charged paintings and the minimalist beauty of Cycladic antiquities. Spanning three decades of work, Cycladic Blues reveals the timeless pull of the human form and invites visitors to see new links between present and past.
Curated by Douglas Fogle in close collaboration with Dumas, the show features more than forty paintings and works on paper hung beside fourteen marble artefacts that the artist selected from the museum’s collections. From Late Neolithic schematic figurines to Classical sculptural fragments, these objects echo Dumas’s exploration of life, love, motherhood and mortality. Their silent presence heightens the emotional charge of her brushwork and underscores the enduring power of the human figure in art.
At the heart of the exhibition are two canvases created especially for Athens, Old (2025) and Phantom Age (2025). Both works reinterpret the second century BCE sculpture The Old Market Woman, offering contrasting viewpoints on age, passage of time and the act of looking. Dumas layers thin veils of oil to conjure haunted faces and elongated limbs that feel at once intimate and monumental.
Fogle describes the installation as a theatre of human experience. Rooms shift from small ink drawings that suggest private memories to towering vertical paintings that confront the viewer with raw emotion. Lighting and sight-lines encourage a back-and-forth gaze between ancient stone and wet pigment, reinforcing questions about what is timeless and what is fleeting.
Dumas is the most expensive living female artist at auction, yet her work remains fiercely political and personal. By placing her canvases among Cycladic idols, the museum challenges hierarchies between so-called high and low, old and new, Western and non-Western. The pairing widens conversations on gender, the gaze and the body at a time when these issues feel increasingly urgent.
Tickets are limited for guided tours and special evening hours. Secure your spot early to witness a landmark show that collapses five thousand years of art history into one vibrant dialogue.
Plan Your Visit
- Marlene Dumas - Cycladic Blues
- June 5 2025 – November 2 2025
- Stathatos Mansion, Vasilissis Sofias Ave & 1 Irodotou St., Athens
- Book tickets online
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