The pioneering Bay Area Figurative artist Elmer Bischoff consistently explored the tensions between abstraction and representation in his work, remarking, “My aim has been to have the paint in the canvas play a double role—one as an alive, sensual thing in itself, and the other conveying a response to the subject. Between the two is this tightrope.”

Beginning in 1950, Bischoff participated in weekly drawing sessions from a model with David Park and Richard Diebenkorn, and two years later he shifted from his earlier Abstract Expressionist style to painting in a figurative mode. Recalling the psychological intensity and ambiguity of scenes by Edward Hopper, "Yellow Lampshade" features a faceless man and woman in a light-filled, richly textured, and sparsely furnished interior space—their forms silhouetted against a looming gray city skyline.