É tude pour "La Grande parade" is a preparatory work for Léger's monumental masterpiece of 1954, La Grande parade, now in the collects ion of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. The present work is a superb example of Léger's fascination with the expressive potential of color and geometric technique, both hallmarks of his work. Léger renders the pictorial elements of the study using vivid planes of color for the background while outlining the figures' contours with bold, black lines. The pigments, in keeping with his works of this period, are bold and fully saturated.

The preparatory series for La Grande parade includes clowns, acrobats, musicians and dancers performing together in a colorful throng. For Léger, the circus was a passion: "If I have drawn circus people, acrobats, clowns, jugglers, it is because I have taken an interest in their work for thirty years... A year elapsed between the first state of La Grande parade and its final state. This interval corresponds to a lengthy process of elaboration and synthesis. The slightest transformation was long pondered and worked up with the help of new drawings. A local alteration often involved changing the entire composition because it affected the balance of the whole" (quoted in Werner Schmalenbach, Fernand Léger, London, 1991, p. 126).