This work was shown in an Artists Union exhibition and garnered Slobodkina her first critical praise: in a review for the New York World Telegram, Emily Genauer wrote that “Esphyr Bolotowsky…is earnestly struggling to get at something, and in the near-abstraction labeled ‘The Angelo-Herndon Petition’ she nearly arrives. The thing is still disjointed. But there are elements like the vertical use of reds in the design, the red banner overhead serving to unify the canvas, and the tensions and repetition of certain motifs, which definitely indicate an attempt to achieve plastically ordered form” (July 25, 1936, p.14B). See also Notes for an Autobiographer, Volume II, p.376.