After living and working for years in New York, where he painted in a boldly expressionistic figurative style (see his Self-Portrait, 1991.27), Beauford Delaney moved to Paris in 1953, seeking greater personal and artistic freedom. There he joined a group of African American expatriates, including Richard Wright and James Baldwin, and embraced abstraction, producing works that explore different effects of color and light. This composition features a vibrant yellow palette typical of Delaney’s work; yellow was his preferred hue, and it carried associations with the sun and held a personal, spiritual significance. Interweaving the yellow with green and orange pigments, he created a lyrical, tapestry-like effect of layered brushwork.