This work is part of a series of paintings dedicated to African Americans, the "blues people," as LeRoi Jones called them in a famous essay on Black history and the evolution of their music in the United States. At the end of his phase most fully inspired by realism, Sassu shows here a different, freer way of using color, even though it is always controlled with absolute maturity and capable of producing passages of pure painting of a very high quality. The reality of the Black condition is thrown into sharp focus by a spare composition, eschewing details but profoundly engaging the viewer, and based on exemplary types like the female figure, marked by a strong communicative force.