1918 , the year the present work was drawn, marked Miró’s first solo exhibition in Barcelona. Having abandoned business school he had completed his artistic studies at Francesc Galí’s Escola d’Arte a few years earlier, which had brought him into the artistic milieu of Barcelona. Galí recognized Miró's difficulty in transcribings literal forms and recommended that he draw from touch rather than sight. “This physical approach to form, aside from its extensions to the artist's later ceramic and cultural activity of the constant features in Miró's art is the distinctive plasticity of his forms” (Margit Rowell, Miró, New York, 1970, p. 8).

A major oil painting from the same year currently in the collects ion of the St. Louis Art Museum evinces the artist’s preoccupation with the female form, and specifically the pose he captures in the present drawing. The painting features a faceted treatment of the nude body which alludes to the influence of Cubism on his work during this t.mes , while the wildly colorful rug and tapestry foreshadow his playful Surrealist output.