In the past, the announcing of the arrival of a circus in small towns was done by clowns who, accompanied by a group of children, took to the streets chanting chulas. Circo, a work by artist Candido Portinari (1903-1962), depicts this arrival. And it is this ritual moment that calls us to reflect upon the cultural significance of the circus’ magic, from the perspective of the child, starting at the process of cultural circularity between the scholarly and the popular in the historical context of Brazilian modernism. In the middle is the clown, a symbolic operator of this whole cultural process.