Nikolai Ivanovich Kulbin created a design of the curtain of the literary and artistic cabaret Stray Dog the same year it opened its doors. The cabaret on the corner of Italianskaya Street and Mikhailovskaya Square (present-day Arts Square) welcomed its first guests on New Year’s Eve of January 1, 1912. The visitors entered a small cellar, which consisted of two rooms and could accommodate up to one hundred people.

The Stray Dog Café was frequented by poets and painters of various art groups, including Vasily Vasilyevich Kamensky, Aleksey Yeliseyevich Kruchyonykh, David Davidovich Burliuk, Benedikt Konstantinovich Livshits, Velimir Khlebnikov, and Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky. Together with Mstislav Valerianovich Dobuzhinsky, Sergey Yuryevich Sudeikin and Nikolay Nikolayevich Sapunov, Nikolai Kulbin painted the walls of the cellar.

Nikolai Kulbin was not only an artist but also a fervent promoter of avant-garde art, an indefatigable lecturer, and an organizer of unions and exhibitions. According to Kuzma Sergeyevich Petrov-Vodkin, Nikolai Kulbin was “the leader of art newborns”.

Benedikt Livshits said the following about Kulbin,

It is believed that the design of the Stray Dog was the first attempt to decorate both the hall and the stage in the same way. The artists succeeded in creating an interior, which allowed the performance to go beyond the stage and continue in the hall.

The original idea was that every performance in the cabaret would be improvised. Nobody had the right to refuse an offer to perform. Such improvised concerts were quite often very exciting and surprising.

Before the Russian Revolution, the Stray Dog Cabaret hosted about one hundred and fifty evenings. On October 26, 1913, the visitors discussed Nikolai Kulbin’s lecture “The Coming Day and the Art of the Future”, in which he theorized about the influence of the increased solar activity on the appearance of radical art movements. On December 10, 1913, there was a discussion of Nikolai Kulbin’s report “Futurism and the Attitude of Modern Society and Critics Toward It”.