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Circus Family: Picasso to Léger

February 22, 2009 - May 17, 2009 | 10:00am - 6:00pm

10 Art Museum Drive
Baltimore, MD 21218

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This exhibition provides a fascinating glimpse of acrobats, clowns, and other circus performers in the early 20th century through approximately 80 works by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Fernand Léger, and Marc Chagall. A variety of paintings, prints, drawings, and artist books drawn fromthe BMA’s world-renowned collection of modern art celebrate the colorful spectacle of the circus as entertainment and also reveal a private, more solitary side of circus life outside the ring.

 

The exhibition, divided into five thematic groups, begins with colorful 19th-century posters designed by Toulouse-Lautrec and Jules Cheret that showcase the circus as a public spectacle. A group of more than 30 works on paper by Picasso, as well as paintings and sculpture loaned from the collections of the Göteborg Museum of Art in Sweden, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Detroit Institute of Arts, explore the private side of circus life with sympathetic portrayals of circus families, many of whom the artist befriended while visiting the Médrano Circus in Paris. George Rouault, Juan Gris, and other School of Paris artists embraced circus themes in a variety of modern art styles. German avant-garde artists like Max Pechstein’s and Max Beckmann’s use of circus imagery ranges from a child-like fascination with the circus and equating feats of daring with artistic self-expression to a somber critique of modern mass spectacle and society. The final section features two circus-related artist books: Léger’s Cirque (1950) and Matisse’s iconic Jazz (1947).

 

Curated by Oliver Shell, Associate Curator of European Painting & Sculpture.

 

Photo Credit: Max Pechstein. The Circus. 1918. The Baltimore Museum of Art: Gift of Mrs. Ralph Booth, BMA 1947.318 ©2008 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Pechstein Hamburg Toekendord/VG BildKunst, Bonn