The sad amusing clown was a favourite motif of the artist. She didn’t saw the doltish circus actor but travelled into past to the mystery plays of the Elizabethan Theatre in the England of the 16th century. There the clown acted in an intermezzo and contrasted the serious emotionalism of the heroes in tragedies. Her clown steels African colours of savannah in the twilight: The dimmed reddish beige and the powerful russet, further the full black like bushes after a blaze. Like a thick daubs his bulbous nose is placed in the centre of his face, and the moustache is much bigger than the mouth. But the eye make-up seems sharpened like javelins and goes again the wide smile. Is this clown similar to the melancholy Pierrot, the thoughtful French pantomime?
