Augusts Annuss studied in Kyiv and in St. Petersburg at the Stieglitz and Art Academies. He is considered to be one of the most outstanding representatives of Latvian figure painting in the period between the two World Wars. He was classified as a Neorealist. From 1929-44 Annuss served as a professor at the Latvian Academy of Art. In 1944 he fled from the Red Army and moved first to Germany, and five years later to the United States. His corpse was later transferred to Rīga and reburied there. Augusts’ brother Jānis Annuss was Minister of Finance of Latvia in the 1930s, and his son John became a well-known painter and photographer. His painting Fight in Front of the Goal, originally Cīņa pie vārtiem, shows a scene from a football match.
Latvia