In the 1950s Guston achieved international acclaim with his lushly painted pure abstractions, so the introduction of caricature-like figural imagery in the late 1960s was startling and highly controversial. The Deluge belongs to this period of transition. Although abstract, the title forces the viewer to read the composition as the aftermath of this cataclysmic event.

But Guston saw his artistic change as essential. He recalled years later that: "When the 1960s came along I was feeling split, schizophrenic. The war, what was happening in America, the brutality of the world. What kind of man am I, sitting at home, reading magazines, going into a frustrated fury about everything-and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue. I thought there must be some way I could do something about it. I knew ahead of me a road was laying. A very crude, inchoate road …" The Deluge is not simply political commentary. Its ominous perspective on survival embodied Guston's internal artistic conflict as well. Guston abhorred "political art" and his dissatisfaction lay not only with the state of the world but his increasing disenchantment with what he had come to see as the hollowness of abstraction.

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