This work is based on Pollock's Number 8 (Black Flowing), oil on canvas, 1951 (O’Connor and Thaw 328). Betty Parsons, whose gallery on East 57th Street in New York exhibited many of Pollock's works, organised his fifth solo show in 1951, his Black Paintings. To coincide with the exhibition, Pollock made screenprints of six of the paintings, of which the present is an example. A proposed edition of 25 signed and numbered copies of each work was called for but it is widely believed to have never been completed. It was not until after the artist’s death, under the authorisation of Lee Krasner that the series was fully realised and published posthumously in an edition of 50 in 1964.