Sassu’s reworking of Picasso’s model, linked to the world of the circus and acrobats of the urban periphery, appears in the numerous variations on the theme of red men, a cycle which begins in the 1930s. Here in the foreground a family dressed in their costumes is given a sculptural representation; the father and mother invite their son to do a trick, against a background of two circus tents. The artist renders all the figurative elements in a deliberately antinaturalistic color, dense and pasty, playing on variations of red.