Francis Picabia published Poèmes et dessins de la fille née sans mere [Poems and Designs by the Girl Born Without a Mother] in 1918 in Lausanne which reflected his interest in mechanics, purposeless machines, and in the juxtaposition of women and machines. Through the editor Jul Heuberger he came into contact with the Dadá group in Zürich who proposed a complete negation of positivist reasoning. Picabia’s machines—useless and self-sufficient—connected with their ideas.

This enigmatic drawing is usually linked to a group of works in which the artist plays with geometrical figures distributed on paper symmetrically, generating a series of emblems and symbols with hidden meanings.

The shape is reminiscent of a grotesque female figure wearing a red dress and a skirt with fringes. The circles suggest arms and breasts, while the black dot appears to be a disproportionate and muted head. A simple landscape composed of sky and grass serves as a background.