The Ancient World

Artists are always looking to the past for inspiration and ideas. I will look at how ancient art has had an influence on artworks through history.

Alberto Giacometti was influenced by the cave of swimmers in Egypt. 





Giacometti's work shown below has links to the artwork in the cave. The figures in his sculpture have very similar stick figure anatomies.




The Willendorf Venus statue inspired sculpture work of Henry Moore. He took the exaggerated anatomy of humans from this ancient statuette.






The Tartaria Tablets from 5500 BC are considered the earliest evidence of written communication by man.



Jean Michel Basquiat was inspired by these markings and made artwork with a very similar visual language.


In ancient Greece, a lot of art was presented in pottery that was produced. This ancient Greek pottery influenced the work of Grayson Perry.










Grayson Perry's pottery art was similar to ancient Greek art in the way it presented a scene or story.





Pablo Picasso's distorted cubist portraits were inspired by ancient African masks and sculptures.