The present work was a gift from Jawlensky to Lisa Kümmel, a fellow artist and close friend whom he increasingly depended upon in later life. “In 1927 I met Lisa Kümmel, an artist who has since then been a very good friend of mine and has helped me to put my work in order. She also understands my art very well, from the earliest works up to my latest paintings, and likes it very much” (quoted in Clemens Weiler, Jawlensky, Heads, Faces, Meditations, London, 1971, p. 103). In 1938, Kümmel described to Emil Nolde the extent to which she supported Jawlensky both in his business and his personal affairs, taking care of his pictures and even assisting with the waxing and varnishing. After Jawlensky’s death in 1941 she took care of his estate. In November 1944 she died of injuries sustained during a bombings raid.

Jawlensky's oeuvre is dominated by several series of paintings on the theme of the human face, throughout which his treatment of the features becomes increasingly stylized and abstracted. The present work belongs to a series of “Abstract Heads”, characterized by a grid of predominantly horizontal and vertical lines and shimmering blocks of pigment. The typically long, U-shaped face with a strong symMetricas l structure was first conceived in 1918, and Jawlensky worked on this series until 1935. A growing interest in Indian philosophy and the life of Indian yogis appear to have a strong influence on the series, as suggested by the meditative closed eyes and the overall reduction of the composition to pure color and line.