Filla was a frequent visitor to Paris between 1911 and 1914 where he befriended Picasso, Braque, Gris, Jacob and their circle. Douglas Cooper in 'The Cubist Epoch' (London 1971) discusses the importance of cubism in Czechoslovakia 'Filla was the most constructive of the Czech cubist painters... he had studied paintings by Braque and Picasso of 1909 intelligently...The avant-garde Czech artists were not inclined to imitate true cubism; they were not concerned with recreating in all its fullness the sold tangible reality of a still life or a mere seated figure. They wanted their subjects to have a higher symbolic significance, to represent moments of spiritual intensity in the life of man, to express deep inner fellings and a sense of national awareness'