Michael Ayrton (1921-1975)

Discussing the maze series of figures, the artist (Drawings and Sculpture, London, 1966, opposite, pl. 139) wrote, 'Although I propesied that Daedulus 'having worked his miracle would become still', he has returned ambiguously to my sculpture. He is not still, nor is he still Daedalus. He provided, as the creator of the labyrinth at Knossos in which the Minotaur was imprisoned, the starting point for the series variously called Maze Makers and Maze Figures but in these he has become for me a being at once more general and more personal. He has become any man who, during his life, builds in and around himself a maze of circumstances and experiences and this, it seems to me, we all do. This labyrinth has two inevitably linked functions. It excludes to protect and contains to imprison'.