Giacometti related this work to his memory of sitting in a Paris brothel and seeing four naked women at the far end of the room. ‘The distance which separated us, the polished floor, seemed insurmountable in spite of my desire to cross it and impressed me as much as the women’, he recalled. The tiny size of the figures and the heavy base with sloping sides, which suggests a receding floor, recreates the sense of distance and confrontation experienced by the artist.