Gene Davis is famous for painting lively compositions of thin, vibrantly colored stripes. Along with Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, Davis was at the center of the Washington, D.C. contingent of Color Field painters known as the Washington Color School. Fascinated by color relationships, Davis delighted in alternating thin bright vertical stripes to create syncopated patterns reminiscent of jazz and bebop. In an Upstate New York parking lot in 1972, he painted Niagara, which, at 43,680 square feet, was the largest painting ever made at the time.