Le Cirque, fabrique de l'art moderne

Exhibition at the Musée de Montmartre, Paris, 16 October 2026 – 14 February 2027

For nearly a century, from 1873 to 1972, the circus was the beating heart of Montmartre. Just a stone’s throw from the Bateau-Lavoir studios, the Cirque Fernando – which later became the Cirque Medrano – established itself as one of the highlights of Parisian life. Behind the acrobats’ feats, the splendour of the costumes and the magic of the ring, generations of painters discovered an unrivalled playground for experimentation.

Degas, Seurat, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, Chagall, Rouault, Léger and many others found there far more than mere entertainment: a space where new ways of seeing, of representing movement and of conceiving modernity were invented.

This exhibition catalogue invites readers to explore the unexpected history of the circus as a crucible of creativity. It reveals how the circus profoundly nourished the imagination of artists and helped shape the major aesthetic upheavals of the 19th and 20th centuries.