Arshile Gorky painted Composition (Still Life) during a time when he was transitioning from a realistic style to a more abstract style pioneered by European modernists such as Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne, and Henri Matisse. Arresting color and a dynamic combination of organic and geometric shapes move the eye around the composition.

Gorky began life in Armenia, as Vosdanig Adoian. In 1916 his family fled to the United States to escape the increasing persecution of Armenians during World War I. After arriving on Ellis Island, Vosdanig renamed himself: Arshile—a Russian derivative of Achilles—and Gorky, after the Russian writer Maxim Gorky, whose name means “the bitter one.”