Mayakovsky was the great poet of the Russian revolution he immersed himself in the struggle to build a new world and changed russian literatue in the process. Revolutionary in deed and word he became disillusioned with the Stalinisation of the revolution and took his own life.

This work formes part of a triptych for an exhibition in Pushkin House in Central London entitled "A Suite of Lighted Rooms: reflections on Russian Culture".

Entitled "The Little Tragedies" the triptych was based on work of the same name written by Pushkin in the early 1830s, and are highly compressed "chamber dramas", dealing with the contradictions of being human. I thought the title fitted they work I was trying to undertake focusing as they do on a protagonist at a crucial moment of moral choice.

The other parts of the Tritych are, "Once more, once again, still once more, after Repin"print 61 and "Russian blues, after Abramovich"print 57. They form a pastiche on the colours of the Russian flag.