This lithograph immediately strikes the viewer with its fragmented composition, its almost cut-out shapes, and its more abstract or graphic appearance — a surprising departure for those who typically associate Chagall with biblical, romantic, or village scenes full of levitation, animal symbolism, and poetic bursts.
In reality, this work belongs to a period of collaboration with the art journal XXe Siècle, founded by Gualtieri di San Lazzaro, who commissioned major modern artists to create pieces that were at times more experimental or deliberately contemporary in tone. This lithograph belongs to a context in which artists were encouraged to engage with abstraction, pure plastic forms, or even constructivist influences.
It is not, then, a radical change in direction, but rather a temporary openness to another formal vocabulary within a specific editorial framework. In fact, despite the geometry, elements of the circus or theater remain visible: masks, faces, feathers, floating gazes — yet treated with an economy of line and a deconstruction that evokes Miró or Léger.
One might say that this work is a variation on the theme of the circus, but interpreted in a more modern and formal spirit, almost like a mental collage, where figure fragments come together like paper cut-outs, like shattered memories.
It is a singular piece within his body of work, but not an incoherent one. It reveals Chagall’s ability to adapt to bolder editorial contexts while preserving his personal symbolic universe. A work that is thus both rare and historically meaningful.
