Charming and highly original deck of cards, titled "Le Cirque" (“Circus”), featuring designs by Belgian artist Charles Pry, hand drawn on linoleum and printed by the artist, with solid pink backs, c.1975. The designs are in black and white, and when laid out and properly arranged the cards form a single circus scene; a portion of the scene is shown in the final picture. The deck is one of a limited edition of 300, although the number of this deck within the edition does not appear on the card (see Ace of Clubs).
Pry was one of the founders of a group of Belgian avant-garde artists known as "La Jeune Peinture Belge," described by the Oxford Dictionary of Art as "an avant-garde artists' association founded in Brussels in 1945 with the aim of holding exhibitions of contemporary Belgian art throughout Europe." The Oxford Dictionary of Art goes on to state: "The members of the group (who included Pierre Alechinsky and Pol Bury) were strongly individualistic and had no common programme, but they were basically abstract in their outlook and were influenced particularly by the expressive abstraction of the post-war École de Paris. The group dissolved in 1948."
As with other Pry decks, the artwork in this deck is sophisticated and childlike at the same time. There are 52 cards in the deck, plus 2 Jokers. One of the Jokers also serves as the frontispiece card (see small "J" in corner). They are long cards, measuring approximately 101mm x 62mm – "approximate" in the sense that there are slight differences in the size of the cards. There is no original box, although the cards are currently housed and will travel to a buyer in an unrelated plastic box that accommodates their size and protects them.
The assembly of the suited cards creates a picture. All four suits create four different pictures.
