Original lithograph printed in colors on wove paper bearing the Arches script watermark.
Image size: 20 1/2 x 17
Sheet size: 28 x 21 inches
1975
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Hand signed in pencil lower right Marc Chagall.
A fine impression of the definitive state, from the edition of 200, numbered "182/200" in pencil lower left (apart from the edition with poster lettering added produced to advertise an exhibition of the artist’s work at the Musée National Message Biblique, Japan, 1975). Transcribed by Charles Sorlier from Chagall’s large painting "Le cantique des Cantiques III," with the annotation "CH. SORLIER GRAV/Lith." added to the stone lower left. Published by Edition des Amis du Message Biblique Marc Chagall, Nice; printed at Atelier Mourlot, Paris.
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 intrigued him: "For 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." 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:
Mourlot V CS47; Chagall’s Posters Catalogue Raisonné p. 143
