Kupka has been credited with producing the first pure abstractions in modern art. Having enjoyed a formal education in Prague, Vienna and Paris, Kupka rejected representational art altogether in 1911 in preference of extraordinary experiments in abstraction. It is easy to over-simplify Kupka's work but Apollinaire's description of Orphic Cubism offers at least one easily graspable view of his intentions: "[Orphism] is the art of painting new structures with elements which have not been borrowed from the visual sphere, but have been created entirely by the artist himself, and been endowed by him with fullness of reality. The work of the orphic artist must simultaneously give a pure aesthetic pleasure; a structure which is self-evident; and a sublime meaning, that is a subject. This is pure art." (Apollinaire, Les Peintres cubistes, Paris, 1913, English translation, p. 117.)

Painted at the peak of his powers in 1919 to 1920, the series of Tales of Pistils and Stamens focuses on the reproductive processes of plants as a symbol of birth and regeneration. Besides a 'sublime meaning' the flowers also provide Kupka with a rich visual language of colour, curving forms, contrasts of texture and vortexes of petals and leaves. Unlike the rather static works of the mid '20s and '30s, these Post-War pictures are brim-full of the latent energy of the natural world. Three oils from the Tales of Pistils and Stamens are known to exist; two of these are in the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, and the Národní Galerie, Prague. Of the gouaches, one is housed in The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and others are in private collections. Of these works on paper, a drawing previously in the collection of Eugénie Kupka and later Karl Flinker, bears great similarity in composition to the present gouache. Executed circa 1919 the drawing was exhibited in the pivotal Kupka retrospective organised by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1975. (Exhibition Catalogue, p. 210, no. 117, illustrated.)