Demobilization
Bomberg had spent time in the trenches of the Western Front, first with the Royal Engineers from November 1915, then with the King's Royal Rifle Corps from 1916. The experience destroyed his faith in mechanized progress. He was demobbed in 1918, and given a commission by the Canadian War Memorials Fund, though he was warned to ’steer clear of Cubism and Futurism’.
His first version of ‘Sappers at Work: A Canadian Tunnelling Company’ retained 'much of the freedom of colour and structure he had developed in the pre-war period, but recognizable figures that no longer conform to the mechanistic vision of the Mud Bath.' It was rejected out of hand as a 'futurist abortion.' It was while he was going through the protracted negotiations that led to the acceptance of the second version, an almost photorealist work, that he decided to revisit the drawings that became Russian Ballet. This return to Vorticist ideas would be the last time Bomberg dealt in abstraction; despite being one of the very first artists in Europe to develop a fully realised abstract style, the new work he developed in the twenties would tend toward expressive, loosely handled landscapes.
Read more about this topic: Russian Ballet (book)