Critics have considered it to be one of Denmark's 20th century artistic masterpieces, and it was subsequently included in the Danish Culture Canon.

[1] In the 1950s, after a long and difficult period in hospital suffering from tuberculosis, Jorn had embarked on figurative painting hoping to reestablish himself at the European level.

By 1956, he had set up a studio in the small Italian town of Albisola near Genoa, where he began to compose a large painting that he initially titled La ritirata di Russia (The Retreat from Russia); the painting had been inspired by stories told by his friend Umberto Gambetta, who had fought with the Italians in the Battle of Stalingrad (1942–1943) before spending years in Russian prisoner-of-war camps from which few survived.

Created at a time when mankind lived under the threat of nuclear war, the painting can be seen as the artist's personal expression of a world lamenting its own end.

Jorn worked on final adjustments on-location, adding a few black dots representing houses in December 1972 shortly before he died.