THE MUSEUM OF CYCLADIC ART, Athens, is pleased to present Jeff Koons: ‘Venus’ Lespugue, marking the first public display of Balloon Venus Lespugue (Orange) (2013-2019) by Jeff Koons. Exploring the significance of the Venus figure from the Paleolithic period to the present day, the work will be shown from 19 March to 31 August 2026, at the Museum’s Stathatos Mansion alongside a series of ten replicas of Venus figurines from the Upper Paleolithic era, asking how the universal archetype of fertility has transcended across time and place.

Koons’ Balloon Venus Lespugue (Orange) draws inspiration from the prehistoric Venus of Lespugue, a mammoth tusk ivory figurine that dates back approximately 28,000 years. Jeff Koons has been influenced by this figure since the late 1970s. In his series Antiquity, which he started in 2008, the artist’s interpretation of the Venus of Lespugue engages a variety of art historical reference points, from Botticelli and Titian to Duchamp and Brancusi, where the notions of beauty and form play a central role.  Through an intensive, yearslong process, Koons has transposed the fetishized original, renowned for its exaggerated curves, into a towering balloon sculpture of Giacometti-esque proportions.

Next to Koons’ work, the museum will present a series of ten Venus replica figurines from the Upper Paleolithic era, each on loan from museums that house the immovable originals. Among these will be the copy of the Venus of Lespugue from the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris, which served as the direct source of inspiration for Koons’ mirror-polished stainless-steel sculpture. The Venus figurines represent one of humanity’s earliest aesthetic codes – a profound abstraction of fertility, survival, and continuity – made into something compact and portable. Koons’ version revisits this prehistoric visual language through a radically different medium and context: the industrial, hyper-material world of the 21st century.

Ultimately, Koons’ work examines how ancient forms of reverence are echoed in today’s fascination with form, surface, desire, and artifice. Through the polished surface of Koons’ Balloon Venus Lespugue (Orange), viewers can explore how material transformation alters or preserves symbolic meaning, and how contemporary art might help us reconnect to ancient aspects of human experience.

Koons’ work is part of the Homem Sonnabend Collection owned by Antonio Homem Sonnabend and Phokion Potamianos Homem and will be shown at the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens for the first time. The presentation will be accompanied by a new publication featuring an essay by Jeff Koons and leading scholars detailing new research into the Paleolithic period in Greece and abroad.

About Jeff Koons

Internationally recognised artist Jeff Koons (b. 1955, York, Pennsylvania) is widely known for his iconic sculptures Rabbit and Balloon Dog as well as his monumental floral works Puppy and Split-Rocker. Working with everyday objects, his work revolves around themes of self-acceptance and transcendence. 

Since his first solo exhibition in 1980, Koons’ work has been shown in major galleries and institutions throughout the world. His work was the subject of a major exhibition organised by the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2014, which traveled to the Centre Pompidou and Guggenheim Bilbao.

Koons has received numerous awards and honours in recognition of his cultural achievements. Notably, President Chirac promoted Koons to Officier de l’Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur and Koons was honoured with the U.S. Department of State’s Medal of the Arts. Koons was the first Artist-in-Residence at Columbia University’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. Koons is a board member of The International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children and co-founded the Koons Family Institute for the purpose of combating global issues of child abduction and exploitation.

Koons lives and works in New York City.

About the Homem Sonnabend Collection

The Homem Sonnabend Collection constitutes the private holdings of Antonio Homem Sonnabend and Phokion Potamianos Homem. The collection embraces works of the Renaissance in dialogue with significant examples of African and Oceanic art, and early 20th century decorative arts, while also foregrounding seminal figures of postwar and contemporary practice—from Pop Art to Arte Povera—as well as works dating from the 1980s and 1990s. Encompassing a wide range of media, including photography, sculpture, and painting, the collection brings together works by artists such as Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Mario Schifano, Lucio Fontana, Jannis Kounellis, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Jeff Koons, among others.

www.sonnabendcollectionfoundation.org
www.sonnabendmantova.it

About the Museum of Cycladic Art

The Museum of Cycladic Art houses one of the most important and complete collections of Cycladic Art in the world. Cycladic Art flourished on the central and southern Aegean islands, known collectively as the Cyclades, during the 3rd millennium BC. The Cycladic marble female figurines with their clean and abstract forms influenced notable 20th and 21st-century artists such as Constantin Brancuşi, Amedeo Modigliani, Alberto Giacometti, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, and Ai Weiwei.

Committed to inspiring and benefiting multiple communities, the Museum of Cycladic Art has made its mark on the city of Athens and beyond. Founded in 1986 as a non-profit legal entity under private law, the Museum is supervised by the Ministry of Culture and its permanent collections belong to the Greek State. The Museum’s permanent collections include more than 3,000 ancient Cycladic, Greek, and Cypriot artefacts from the fourth millennium BC to approximately the sixth century AD.

Exhibitions from the Museum’s permanent collections have been hosted at museums and foundations in cities worldwide, including Tokyo (National Museum of Western Art), Kyoto (National Museum), Houston (The Museum of Fine Arts), Brussels (Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire), London (The British Museum), Paris (Galeries nationales du Grand Palais), New York (Onassis Foundation), Madrid (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia), Rome (Musei Capitolini), Beijing (Imperial City Art Museum), and Istanbul (Sakip Sabanci Museum).

Temporary exhibitions at the Museum of Cycladic Art focus on both archaeology and Modern and contemporary art and explore the links between ancient cultures and society today. Artists and curators from all over the world have collaborated with the Museum to study and gain inspiration from its collections and develop unique dialogues between ancient and contemporary objects. To date, the Museum has hosted exhibitions on Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, Thomas Struth, Louise Bourgeois, Sarah Lucas, Ugo Rondinone, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Ai Weiwei, Cy Twombly, George Condo, Βrice Marden, Cindy Sherman, and Marlene Dumas, among others.

Μuseum of Cycladic Art

1, Irodotou Str.

106 74, Athens
Tel.: (+30) 210 7228321-3

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