With its richly impastoed surface, "No. 19" is a classic Abstract Expressionist painting that incorporates the spontaneous, Surrealist-inspired techniques of action painting—a style characterized by thickly textured surfaces and the use of improvised techniques. Like other first-generation artists of the New York School, Richard Pousette-Dart aspired to create large-scale works that could be experienced as all-encompassing arenas for action by the artist, and for perception by the viewer.

A mysterious, totemic personage at the center of the composition appears to emanate from the cosmic forces, represented by radiating, calligraphic black lines, that surround and envelop it. Created in the midst of the Cold War and the Korean War, the figure in "No. 19" seems to embody the uncertainties of a new, existential age, and the renewed search for meaning engendered by the catastrophic cataclysms of the Holocaust, World War II, and the atomic bomb.