In 1919, when Paris was coming back to life after the grim years of World War I, Fernand Léger liked to take walks to Place de Clichy in the northwest part of the city. That square, which had often been depicted by modern artists, was covered in scaffolding at the time. This painting belongs to a series of pictures Léger made in 1918 and 1919 about the visual effects of industry within the urban scene. Gleaming metallic scaffolding cylinders cross the pure, flat colors of building fronts. A staircase railing with circular filigree runs on a diagonal alongside a rose-colored, corrugated surface. The shapes of massive advertising-billboard letters are echoed by rounded puffs of grey smoke.