During one of the happiest stages of his life, the famous Rose period, Pablo Picasso painted circus folk. Sure, the darker stuff which followed would catapault the young Spaniard to art stardom, yet one wonders where he would rather have stayed: the anguish of civil war and Guernica, the brothel of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon or painting clowns and acrobats among the poets of Monmartre.
