Tony Agostini was born in 1916 and was predominantly inspired by the 1930s growing up. During the 1930s, many political ideologies such as Marxist Socialism, Capitalist Democracy, and the Totalitarianism of both Communism and Fascism were engaged in struggles for dominance, and epitomised the political atmosphere of the period. In the Soviet Union, Stalin’s government was in dire need of urgent funds to implement the industrialisation of the Five Year Plan. In a stealthy bid to acquire funds, the government proposed to sell off assets from the State Hermitage Museum in Leningrad (St. Petersburg), which included some two hundred and fifty paintings by the Old Masters, a number of which had been deemed irreplaceable. Many of the pieces came to be owned by Andrew Mellon, via the New York based art dealing company, Knoedler.