Picasso's fascination with the world of artistes and the circus began at a very early date, as seen, for instance, in the Pink Period. In his surrealist phases this motif returned - if in a very different form. Now Picasso created the impression of having seen acrobats, hovering in graceful weightlessness on the picture plane, as if in a dream. The shapes of the figures and the intermediate spaces were interlocked to form configurations of an unprecedented kind. Developed out of the picture plane itself, these figures performed the dreamlike balancing act of their own emergence in the arena of the painting.