Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

About this Work

When Henri Matisse made this stencil print, he may have been planning to use it as a book cover. Folded in half, the left side of the sheet would have become the back cover. Two white curtains and a banner emblazoned with the letters CIRQUE mark the circus entrance. On the right side (the front cover), an acrobat performs in the spotlight on a yellow trapeze or tightrope. Her outstretched arms suggest her precarious position.

Matisse sometimes compared an artist to a tightrope walker keeping everything in balance. "Sometimes," he said, "the difficulties appeared: lines, volumes, colors were put together, and then the whole thing collapsed, one part destroying another."

Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art has a complete copy of Matisse's Jazz (Eskenazi Museum of Art 65.23.1–.20) in its original slipcase bearing a personal inscription to the artist’s friend Jean Puy, a Post-Impressionist painter.