Chagall, Marc

Folio, (17 3/4 x 13 1/2 in; 451 x 343 mm), 38 lithographs, including 23 in colors - 3 on double page (25 1/2 x 17 3/4 in; 425 x 648 mm), in- and hors-texte, title page, text in French and justification, on Arches, signed in pencil on the justification, copy 161 of 250, the full sheets, loose (as issued); pristine condition.

Mourlot, 3, 490-527; Cramer, Books, 68.

"The idea of devoting a serie of printed graphics to the sibject of the circus stemmed from the publisher and art dealer Ambroise Vollard [...]. Vollard was an impassioned circus-goer; he possessed his own box in the Cirque d'Hiver in PAris and often took the artist there with him. In 1936, he commissioned Georges Rouault with the production of circus graphics (André Suarès - Georges Rouault. Le Cirque de l'Étoile Filante. Paris, Vollard, 1938). Chagall executed preparatory gouaches for his circus series in the late 1920s. After Vollard's death in 1939, however, the project itsefl was not further pursued, although artistes and and other circus motifs frequently appeared in Chagall's paintings and printed graphics. It was the publisher Tériade, with whom the artist had been on very close terms since the end of the 1940s, who encouraged him to complete the cycle. Chagall thus resumed work on the circus series in 1962, using the already existing gouaches." (Chagall, The Lithographs - La Collection Sorlier, p. 216)