Morris Atkinson Blackburn studied with Modernist painter Arthur B. Carles at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. it was was here, in the 1930s that he learned and taught serigraphy, a medium that was developed as an art form in the WPA.
In 1940 Morris used an older stencil method, pochoir, to create this cubist, abstracted figure. Pochoir uses cut out shapes which are set onto a sheet of paper and then colored, often with a brush. There is no silk used and, in this case the colors abut one another and do not overlap.
"Figure" was done in a variant edition of 10, each proof was done with different color combinations, making this a monoprint.