The City and I conveys Louis Guglielmi’s anxieties about the urbanization of Manhattan. Striking skyscrapers reach upwards as Guglielmi’s sure hands sketch a view from his window, and pedestrians look around in awe of the angular structures around them. Guglielmi was one of many artists hired by the United States government’s Works Progress Administration to create art for public spaces during the Great Depression (1929–1939). This painting is a later and more abstract autobiographical work. Guglielmi incorporated fragments of commercial advertising— a technique borrowed from earlier 20th-century artists. A partially visible yellow advertisement for the 1944 film Murder, My Sweet, based on a novel by Raymond Chandler, evokes Guglielmi’s unease.