Jurgis Preiss' Genia of 1937 portrays the artist’s first wife Gertrude Gennis, a German journalist. They met in Koenigsberg (now Kaliningrad), Gennis became the main love of the artist, a life partner and a faithful ally in the Communist Party of Germany. Together the couple fled to Europe when the Nazis came to power in 1933, both of them were Soviet intelligence agents and in 1939 they moved to the USSR. 

In the same year Preiss created his last couple portrait with his wife - Self-portrait with Genia. That was a small hastily drawn sketch, made on cheap, yellowish and thin paper. Contrary to his own tradition, he placed himself in the foreground, as if trying to protect Gennis from the tragic troubles of Soviet life and the imminent death of tuberculosis. That drawing conveyed the state of internal tension and anxiety, which can be read in the close arrangement of the figures. Like other works with his wife, this one continued the intimate line in the artist’s work - the image of intimate moments of personal life is in the focus of the painting.