No. 15 entered the collection of the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science, and Art (precursor to LACMA) after Pollock was invited to submit a work to the museum’s 1951 juried exhibition, Contemporary Painting in the United States, where it won a $300 purchase prize. While the Abstract Expressionists were gaining increasing attention and success in New York, the painting was considered radical by the museum’s conservative leadership during the McCarthy era, and curator James Byrnes was instructed to hang the work in his office, out of public view.

Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937. Oil on canvas; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, © 2021 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, photo courtesy of the Museo Reina Sofía