For some years I have enjoyed wandering up to the Duveen Galleries when at Tate Britain to see what was in its dedicated sculpture space. Most recently was the sight of Fiona Banner’s decommissioned fighter planes upended, and not so long before that, Martin Creed had athletes sprinting up and down the room in a work celebrating physicality and the human spirit.

Single Form: The Body in Sculpture from Rodin to Hepworth (until December 1) also celebrates physicality and humanity, but by means of more traditional works of sculpture. With its title taken from Barbara Hepworth's Single Form (1961-62; not in the show), and with 17 works all taken from the Tate collection, this is an uncomplicated look at the human figure in sculpture. It aims to show how sculptors moved towards increasingly abstract depictions of the human figure.

The first display in the Duveen Galleries in 1937 featured Rodin and other European artists. Single Form mirrors this, offering pieces by Rodin as well as Frank Dobson, Eric Gill, Aristide Mailliol, Carl Milles, Henry Moore and others.

Works include Rodin’s tiny bronze Woman on a Column, Gill’s St Sebastien (minus arrows, the better to emphasise the saint’s sensuality), the languorous Portland stone sculpture located opposite another upright figure with raised arms, Man with a Bird by Maurice Lambert. Further along, Mailliol’s athletic torso of a woman, in lead, has echoes of classical Greek art.

Barbara Hepworth’s semi-abstract Bicentric Form (left) forms the centrepiece of the show, just as it did in the British pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1950. Poised and graceful, it was sculpted from limestone in 1949 around the time the artist began working on the idea of unifying two or more figures, blending them into a single rhythmic sculptural form.

Only basic information is given for each piece, but this means you really look at the works, not words, enjoying both faithful representation and abstraction. Above all, this is an chance to relish again that wonderful hard and soft paradox of sculpture, how in some cases stone is made to look as soft and forgiving as flesh.