Paul Klee, whose flat in the Bauhaus Meisterhaus complex in Dessau was searched in March 1933 by storm troopers, moved to Düsseldorf on 5 May 1933 with two removal vans, although he had previously been suspended from the Düsseldorf Academy. Paul Klee initially underestimated the political situation and tried to maintain his faith in a normal life. Yet his dismissal from the Düsseldorf Academy in the autumn of 1933 banished all hope. The contracts with the gallery owners in Germany could not be extended, which prompted Klee to seek contracts with galleries abroad. On 23 December, he and his wife Lily Klee (née Stumpf) went into exile in Switzerland. Paul Klee's pictures were shown at exhibitions in Mannheim, Munich, Erlangen, Chemnitz and Dresden as examples of allegedly unsuccessful artworks. Klee's works, which had been defamed as "degenerate art", were removed in the subsequent restructuring of the museums, e.g. in Erfurt.

The picture shown here shows a face reduced to schematic blocks of colour; it can be interpreted as a self-portrait. The black cross, the stamp of censorship and destruction, references Paul Klee's dismissal from the Düsseldorf Academy and his deletion from the list of German artists. The diagonals separate the colour blocks of the face and have a structuring effect. In 1933/1934 Klee used this type of structure several times. Klee created 482 works in 1933, more than in previous years.