Military camouflage department of the USSR People's Commissariat of Defense commissioned Iakov Chernikhov to develop a research work on Military Camouflage for military educational institutions and colleges. Theoretical part of researches left incomplete. It was accompanied by more than 100 colourful compositions.


One of the main idea of camouflage is to merge with the background, change the shape and wholeness of an object. There were no specific pattern and color of camouflage and each country has its own, but the main principle of 'disruptive pattern' stayed the same. All in all, camouflage gave artists full scope for creative work and scientists for experiments. Artists as masters to create optical illusions were commissioned to develop forms and methods of camouflage.


Camouflage for vast surfaces to avoid detection of the enemy observing from the air was simply a poster drawing in contrast color. Though the french artist Guirand de Scevola (1871–1950), camouflage inventor, was not a cubist, Picasso, Braque and other artists-cubists played a significant role in production and development of the camouflage concept. Artists-camoufleur used such indicative for cubists approaches as resolving the object into components of geometric pattern, energetic rhythm of lines and drops, contrast shifting from one form to another, which helped artfully to conceal the object shape, disrupt its outline, causing its melting into surroundings.


In his compositions Iakov Chernikhov studied variants of disruptive pattern — 'big spot' and multicolor — to camouflage vehicles of distinct shape and large size, conspicuous on the changing backgrounds.
Architect and artist by his second education, Iakov Chernikhov developed variants of camouflage design, taking into account specific characteristics of spatial design, aims to turn the object into shapeless and undetected mass. Technically oriented, Iakov Chernikhov's works on military camouflage got such a complex dramaturgy that due to tragic anti-war sounding may pretend to the role of independent art composition.