Kandinsky's art changed every time he changed countries; its very receptivity may have been one of its sustaining strengths. This painting was done on 1933, when he and his wife relocated to Paris. The decision to leave Hitler's Germany may be the subject of "Gloomy Situation" from July 1933, which depicts two implicitly figurative shapes conversing across a dark, shuttered space. Here one sees the influences of Surrealists like Miro, and also of scientific drawings of cells and embryos with which Kandinsky had become fascinated.