A fine impression of the definitive state

from the edition of 250, (apart from the pencil signed and numbered book edition of 24). One of 38 original lithographs (23 in color) illustrating the livre d'artiste album The Circus, with text written by the artist himself. Published by Efstratios Tériade, Editions Verve, Paris; printed by Atelier Fernand Mourlot, Paris.

In excellent condition, with bright, fresh colors, printed on a full sheet.

The idea of devoting a series of original lithographs to the subject of the circus stemmed from the publisher and art dealer Ambroise Vollard, for whom Chagall had already executed a number of book illustrations. Vollard was an inpassioned circus-goer; he possessed his own box at the Cirque dŐHiver in Paris and often took his artist friends, including Chagall, there with him. In 1936 he commissioned Georges Rouault to produce a series of color aqutints on circus themes. Chagall executed preparatory gouaches for his circus series in the late 1920Ős. After VollardŐs death in 1939, however, the project itself was not further pursues, although circus motifs frequently appeared in Chagall;s paintings and graphic works. It was the publisher Efstratios Teriade, with whom the artist had been on very close terms since the end of the 1940Ős, who encouraged him to complete the cylce. Chagall thus resumed work on the circus series in 1962, using the already existing gouaches. The 38 lithographs comprising the finished album were published by Teriade in 1967. The accompanying texts were also composed by Chagall; thus the work is a livre dŐartiste in the strict sense off the word, the mutually complimentary text and imagery having both been created by Chagall.

Like Vollard, Chagall loved the circus and, according to his assistant Charles Sorlier often took childlike pleasure in it. However, it was a deeper level he sensed in the circus theme which intigued him: ŇFor me the circus is a magic spectacle which passes by like the affairs of the world and melts. There is an unsettling and a profound circus.Ó In his texts on the circus series, Chagall who did not like to talk about his art - points out with uncustomary frankness that in his painting the subject was only the first impulse for the creative process, in the course of which the elements of reality, the circus as it is experiences, are subjected to thorough transformation:

Why are clowns, these trick riders and these acrobats in my visions? And why do their make-up and their grimaces stimulated me? With them I approach other horizons. Their colors and make-up draw me towards other psychic deformations, which I dream of painting.

Mourlot 523; Cramer 68 XXXIV