During the Russian Revolution, John Graham was imprisoned by Bolsheviks as a supporter of the White Army, associated with the tsar. After being released, Graham fled to Poland, spent time in Paris, and eventually moved to New York with his family in 1920. Changing his name and taking on a pseudonym after he settled in the United States, Graham would frequently conceal his origin. He befriended and championed younger artists such as Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, and Jackson Pollock in the 1930s, and he painted canvases inspired by late Cubism, particularly the work of Pablo Picasso. In this painting, Graham depicts an enigmatic still life that alludes to his origins through the Cyrillic letters. The object on the left might be a palette, referring to his own status as an artist at a time when he became more and more disillusioned with the American art scene.