Densely colored and richly textured, Untitled (Red) typifies the abstract paintings that Beauford Delaney produced after moving to Paris in 1953. At fifty-two years old, he was following the pattern of Henry Ossawa Tanner who settled permanently in Paris in 1904 at age forty-five. Fascinated with the possibilities of composing and orchestrating color, Delaney explored the range of the color red from a deep red through light red and orange. He then intensified the various reds further with accents of bright and pale green, red’s complement. The swirling brushwork suggests quick flicks of the wrist and jabs of the brush to create an allover network of color tones that reaches the farthest corners of the canvas with no special area of focus. In describing Delaney’s work the French critic Jacques Michel wrote, “His entirely raw paint fills the canvas from end to end like skin quivering and saturated with itself.” During these years a debate emerged among many African-American artists concerning whether abstraction could effectively communicate messages of social and political importance. While deeply committed to abstraction, Delaney continued to produce easily recognizable portraits of friends and patrons.