Le Cirque

Le Cirque, 1967

23 color lithographs
15 black and white

Edition:  270 copies

Woman Circus Rider with green Rooster
The big Parade
The Stable
Woman Circus Rider and green Horse
Cirque
Cirque

This exuberant and dynamic series of lithographs around the circus motif is one of Chagall’s most celebrated.

In the 1920th Chagall produced several beautiful gouaches in a series called Cirque. Vollard had asked him to create these in celebration of their trips to the circus. After the death of Vollard in a car crash in 1939, there was no further thought of the circus gouaches until the late 1940’s when Tèriade urged him to start working on these project again. Chagall agreed but war interrupted communication between artist and publisher. Chagall left France to go to the States. Here he created his first color-lithographs the Arabian Nights, followed later by Daphnis and Chloe.

Finally, in 1962 using the beautiful gouaches he created back in 1927 as a road map, Chagall charted a course to the completion of Cirque, his most comprehensive and vibrantly alive lithographic suite.

Cirque is a celebration of the colors, textures, and line of Marc Chagall – one of the greatest artists of the past century.