In Mysteria #1, a clownish figure and three white horses occupy a shadowy stage-like space. The image’s meaning is runic, the palette harsh. However, the artist’s background may help illuminate the canvas. Born in Ukraine, Ivan Dombrowsky immigrated first to Paris and later to New York, where he took American citizenship and changed his name to John Graham. Having studied with American Realist John Sloan, he relocated to Baltimore in 1925 and joined a local group called the Modernists, serving as their secretary and exhibiting in their gallery. Mysteria #1, probably painted in Baltimore, records the impact of Pablo Picasso’s circus imagery on Graham’s thinking. The horses also recall the famed Lipizzaner stallions beloved of the 16th-century Habsburg rulers of Spain and Austria. As a Ukranian and former member of the fierce Circassian Regiment of the Russian Army, Graham certainly had memories of such horses dating to the Russian Revolution.