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Imre Ámos was worried about financial problems and personal threats to his personal existence in the 1930s. His art changed: he expressed the reality of events with sharp contrasts of colours and with horrors of absurd visions. Suddenly, he recalled memories of his religious education and integrated mythical elements into his visions. Chagall's pictures, which he saw during his trip to Paris in 1937, also urged him to use biblical motifs and references. His associations link his pictures to surrealism. The self-portrait shows the artist in a sketchy way: he is wearing a hat and he appears to be recoiling. The whites on the face in red and blue contours give a mask-like appearance. The look of the strongly contoured eyes are counterbalanced by drooping eyelids The head is almost lost in the yellow pullover, whose yellow stripes lead to the face. There is a gable over the head, and an angel is standing on the left of the picture: the landscape appears through its body. There is a canvass in the front, over which a red ladder leads from the painter to the angel. Everything is tilting in the picture, as if an enormous eathquake had tipped them out of balance. The motif of the angel can be interpreted in different ways in Ámos'pictures: it can be a guardian angel, a muse or, as we think, the angel of death, whom the painter is soon to meet.
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