In the 1920s, Geller visited British-controlled Palestine in the hope of discovering an indigenous Jewish folk art tradition. While the trip provided Geller with rich material for subsequent work, he did not find what he sought. Around 1924, Geller wrote Shteyn a disparaging account of the artistic environment he encountered in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, “All have whims of various kinds: the whim of contention of the Jewish people as to why people buy no pictures from them, as to why American Jews are so greedy as to not support them for a few years, and so on … [The Hebraists] have… brought over ideologies from Paris, Warsaw, or Germany, which do not suit life here.”