Containing Elegy to the Spanish Republic language and symbolic black and red colouring, further examples of this significant lithograph are held in the Tate Gallery, London, and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

In San Francisco in 1937, Motherwell heard the novelist and art theorist André Malraux speak at a rally concerning the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), provoking his interest in a moral issue that would provide the subject and inspiration for his work for the rest of his life. He ultimately produced more than 250 paintings and works on paper exploring the topic, allowing him to express in visual form what he described as a “funeral song for something one cared about.”

About the Elegies, Motherwell said, “After a period of painting them, I discovered Black as one of my subjects—and with black, the contrasting white, a sense of life and death which to me is quite Spanish. They are essentially the Spanish black of death contrasted with the dazzle of a Matisse-like sunlight.”