By drawing a simple outline, Léger captured a close-up view of the Belarusian avant-garde artist Nadia Khodossiévitch (later Khodossiévich-Léger, 1904–1982). As she is shown in many of her own self-portraits, Khodossiévitch is depicted holding a potted plant. Khodossiévitch was trained in Russia and Poland, and moved to Paris in 1924, where she studied and became a teacher at the Académie Moderne, a free art school led by Léger. The pair became romantically involved but were separated throughout the Second World War, when Léger fled to the United States while Khodossiévitch remained in Paris and joined the French Resistance. Reunited in France in 1945, the pair married in 1952 and remained together until he died three years later.