After concluding his arts training in Weimar, Germany, Max Beckmann made frequent trips to Paris where he visited the Medrano Circus and enjoyed the nightspots of Montmartre. Upon returning from service as a medical orderly during World War I, he published several print portfolios, the first of which included a portrait of himself dressed as Harlequin. Carnival performers, cabaret and circus people, and their props become primary subjects of his art in subsequent years, often staged in enigmatic groupings. The Tightrope Walkers belongs to his 1921 portfolio Jahrmarkt (Annual Fair), with a frontispiece that bears the inscription “Beckmann Circus.” In this graphically powerful image, the tightrope walker is posed in front of a circular Ferris wheel with outstretched legs that evoke the hands of a clock. Her time may be running out, Beckmann suggests, just as Harlequin, dressed like the grim reaper, approaches from the right. Far below, the safety net tilts up against the picture plane, which together with the generally flattened space and the dizzying vantage point confirms that Beckmann had assimilated the lessons of Cubism.