EUROPA - CIRCUS - 2

The stamps have been issued in se-tenant, in a 20-stamp sheet (10 x 2), and the First Day Cover (FDC) was also issued. Viewed from "the outside" through the spectator’s eyes, the circus is a type of organized entertainment, a structure that unifies in itself life dynamism, dramatic quality and merriment. It is the place where homo ludens seriously does his everyday job. Muscle-men, equilibrists, acrobats, clowns, performing animals, assistants, fire-eaters, horse and elephant riders, wild animal tamers with beasts jumping through flaming hoops ... all these represent the structure of freedom that has imposed upon itself an organized form of behaviour. Viewing it from "the inside", it is hard, long-term work, exercises or circus numbers repeated countless times, travelling from place to place, nomadism, but above all a structure of responsibility which means risking one’s life - for example putting your head into the gaping jaws of a wild beast or risking your life on a tightrope high above the ground. One wrong step, a bad estimate, a moment of carelessness and lack of concentration may lead to serious consequences and even tragedies. It is a difficult job. The circus is also the childhood of the world. In Roman times (the word circus in Latin means the ring, circle)), it was a solidly built stone structure assigned for entertainment, games and contests, but also to less joyous decisions about life and death of gladiators which were usually derived from a down-turned or up-turned thumb sign of the spectators. In more recent times stone structures have been replaced by tents, and the games and circus numbers themselves have become, despite all the dangers, more innocent and unsophisticated. Two men, Philip Astley in England and Antonio Franconi in France, are considered to have been the founders of the modern circus at the end of the 18th century, the time when the circus and the theatre represented a large-scale mass-organized type of entertainment. Acrobats, wild beasts, clowns, sketches and drillticks, with their order of numbers and the sequence of events, create a highly strung dramaturgy that ends with an effective number that arouses trepidation, admiration or relief. As a condensed structure, the circus is a counterpoint to the everydayness and its commonness, it condenses in a few moments the cumulative moments of the highest life expression and tension. The stage with its elements of the theatre, dance, romantic heroic undertakings, laughter and fear, the stage caters for both grown-up and young children. Circuses Medrano, Renz, Orfei, Buffalo Bill, Cirque Carré,... Brothers Fratellini, Trio Codonas, ... all of them are famous figures of the nomadic cupolas of undulating canvas Pantheons moving from place to place to put up yet another magnificent dome on some piece of wasteland, fallow ground or suburban square. Numerous painters and artists have painted circuses and their protagonists. The long list includes the names of Croatian painters M.Kraljević, F.Šimunović, M.Uzelac and E.Tomašević, but also E.Degas, E Nolde, F.Goya, G. Rouault, P.Picasso, J.Ensor, J.Miró, P.Signac, Toulouse-Lautrec, the genius of film, F.Fellini - his Clowns, to our Z.Bourek ... This is a theme that keeps appearing as an incentive and inspirational basis of numerous works of art of European and Croatian artists, some of which have become the highest and almost anthological examples of creative invention and creation, the tragedy and comedy of man in the history of painting or film.