Le Petit Équilibriste (The Little Tightrope Walker)
Jacques Villon, Le Petit Équilibriste (The Little Tightrope Walker), 1914, drypoint on paper, Gift of Kevin and Dawn Longe, © artist or other rights holder, 2001.104.2
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- Title
Le Petit Équilibriste (The Little Tightrope Walker)
- Related Titles
original language: Le Petit Équilibriste
translated: The Little Tightrope Walker
- Artist
- Date
1914
- Medium
drypoint on paper
- Edition
edition of 50
- Dimensions (H x W x D)
plate: 8 3/4 in x 6 3/8 in; sheet: 17 3/4 in x 12 1/4 in
- Collection Area
Graphic Arts
- Category
Prints
- Object Type
intaglio print
- Culture
French
- Credit Line
Gift of Kevin and Dawn Longe
- Accession Number
2001.104.2
- Copyright
© artist or other rights holder
- Terms
Jacques Villon's great achievement as a printmaker was his creation of a special graphic language for Cubism, the early twentieth-century avant-garde movement whose most famous practitioners were Picasso and Bracque. To their experiments with fragmenting and reassembling objects in shifting relationships on a flat surface, he added a sense of dynamic movement.
The Little Tightrope Walker exemplifies Villon's masterly wielding of the drypoint needle to produce dark, velvety lines that stand out against the cream color of the paper. Villon's handling of the medium heightens the ambiguity of space, figure, planes, and motion created by his signature hatching and crosshatching.
- Exhibitions
2008 Making Merry: the Circus and Carnival in Graphic Art Portland Art Museum
