Les Saltimbanques

The present work was drawn during a rare time of solitude for Picasso. His relationship with Françoise Gilot had become untenable. Picasso wanted a third child, but Françoise refused, as she wanted to spend more time on her own art, which Picasso had previously discouraged. She could also no longer ignore the numerous affairs that Picasso had been involved in while they were living together. By mid-September 1953, Picasso and Françoise parted ways for good, with Françoise moving to rue Gay-Lussac in Paris. Picasso found himself alone at La Galloise in Vallauris. This loneliness and period of personal crisis gave way to an incredible outpouring of creative energy as Picasso began a series of 180 drawings, frenetically composed between 28 November 1953 and 3 February 1954. The central theme covered was that of the artist and model, but within the series, Picasso not only looked to the past with the circus, clowns and acrobats, he also looked to his future, as he depicted themes like old age and eroticism for the first time–subjects he would endlessly explore in the coming decades.
Picasso had a life-long passion for the circus, a fascination which is on full display in the present work. Boldly painted in rich blacks, the artist has deftly used the positive and negative spaces which make up the players in his circus. Rebecca West has commented that for Picasso, the circus could, in fact, represent the world of art in all of its complexities: There the beautiful and the strong and the dignified collaborate with the deformed and the comic, and with the animals. Into the ring go the equestrians and the strong men and the acrobats, the dwarfs and the clowns, the horses and the performing dogs and the monkeys. Out of their incongruity they make a whole which delights; and they achieve this result because each gives an expert performance in the craft he has chosen” (R. West, op. cit., p. 26).