The year he made this self-portrait, the young Gerhard Henning was a student at the Valand School of Painting in Gothenburg. A fellow student and close friend was Ivar Arosenius, who would influence his artistic expression in the direction of a flat two-dimensionality. Henning, however, was torn between continuing to paint and switching to sculpture. Increasingly, the latter took over, becoming dominant from the 1920s.