One of Louis’s iconic Veil paintings, Dalet Beth was produced using the innovative “stain” technique. The artist poured acrylic paint diluted with turpentine onto an unprimed, unstretched canvas, producing watercolor-like fields of color. Hints of bright green, yellow, pink, and orange flicker along the top edge of the canvas only to be muted by an overlying dark, smoky layer. The effect of thinned paint fused with the weave of the canvas was famously described by art critic Clement Greenberg as “color somehow disembodied, and therefore more purely optical,” an interpretation that emphasizes the visual effect of the painting rather than any possible metaphorical content. The term Veil was coined by former director of The Museum of Modern Art William Rubin to describe the gossamer-like quality of the paint. The title, Dalet Beth, a transliteration of two Hebrew letters, was applied to the painting after the artist’s death for identification purposes.