Marc Chagall: The Circus

AVAILABLE TO PREORDER NOW. (Dispatch date: w/c 23rd Nov)

SPECIAL EXHIBITION RRP £20

A new publication, Marc Chagall: The Circus, is published by Paul Holberton Publishing to coincide with the opening of the exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield in November 2026.

Edited by Clayton and Professor Markus Müller, Director of the Kunstmuseum Pablo Picasso Münster, it explores one of the most enchanting and recurrent motifs in Marc Chagall’s oeuvre: the circus. While central to Chagall’s art, the circus has never been the sole subject of a comprehensive study. The book also features a new translation of Chagall's essay, The Circus, first published in French in 1967 but never published in English in its entirety.

Throughout his prolific career, Chagall returned to the vivid imagery of acrobats, clowns, and fantastical performers, transforming the circus into a metaphor for the complexities, joys, and sorrows of the human experience.

Presenting Chagall's celebrated lithographs on this subject alongside a selection of paintings, it offers both an introduction to Chagall’s work and life and an examination of his unique vision and symbology. By situating these works within the context of Chagall’s personal background, his experiences as an immigrant, and his lifelong embrace of theatricality, the book will illuminate how these factors shaped his circus imagery. It will further contextualise these images among those of Chagall's peers within European modernism.

108 pages. Hardcover.