American Art Collaborative

"Summer days meant happy times . . . watching the magic circus that came to town once a year. The colorful circus decorations and performances of the acrobats made so deep an impression that it later greatly influenced my work." The artist, in his book The Technique of Wood Sculpture, 1965
Over one quarter of Chaim Gross's sculptures are of acrobats and are based on the itinerant performers he saw as a child. Gross put his figures in nearly impossible physical positions because he believed that stacking more than two on top of one another offered more possibilities for interesting silhouettes and compositions. The stocky, muscular athletes in Three Acrobats on a Unicycle together create the illusion of a spire lifting weightlessly into the air