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Shortly after sketching the first president of Czechoslovakia, who was returning after four years of wartime exile, Josef Mařatka created a statue of a woman that connected the beauty of the female body with an expression that communicated unfulfilled desire by gazing into the distance, as Anna Masaryková described the creation of the sculpture in the book Josef Mařatka (1958). "The natural pose of a seated gymnast captured his attention and inspired him to create a lyrical composition, which he soon completed in 1919. He called it "Memory". The first study is of a woman in gathered drapery; in the final statue he created a perfect nude, not dissimilar to Ariadne Abandoned ..."