In 1912 Marcel Duchamp executed his most radical and significant early work. Now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Nu déscendant un escalier no. 2, a kaleidoscopic exploration of movement painted in a Cubo-Futurist style, was intended to be exhibited in the year of its execution at the Salon des indépendants in Paris, but its literary title and unconventional approach led Duchamp to withdraw the work after receiving critical comments from Albert Gleizes and other 'hard-line' Cubists. The following year Duchamp submitted the painting to the now-famous 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art—known as the Armory Show—in New York, where it caused a great sensation.

Lampooned by the critics but admired by a number of influential collects ors, Nu déscendant un escalier no. 2 established Duchamp at the forefront of the avant-garde. By 1937, painting had long ceased to be a part of Duchamp’s artistic practice and his incisive and experimental Ready-mades and subversive objects had transformed the way in which the creation of art was determined. However, during the summer of 1937 Duchamp was prompted to create a miniature retrospective in the form of pochoir reproductions housed in a Boîte-en-Valise. Duchamp originally planned to publish an edition of 250 reproductions of each of the five chosen works. Ultimately, only Nu déscendant un escalier no. 2 and Le Grand verre (The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even) were created, and in such small editions that the exact number of pochoirs remains unknown.

The question of authenticity and originality had long played a part in Duchamp's conceptual works, and he brought these ideas to bear in the pochoir reproductions. Standard practice in France when authenticating legal documents—of which Duchamp was well aware due to his father’s position as the notary of Blainville-Crevon—was for the lawyer to apply a small-denomination postage stamp to the document and sign his name across it. This resourceful method of preventing falsified reproduction was carried out by Duchamp on each original pochoir.