Boris Taslitzky, a student of Jacques Lipchitz and Jean Lurçat, was always a consistent supporter of realistic traditions, despite his expressive manner of painting. His works are filled with the ideas of humanism and social justice. In 1933, Taslitzky joined the Association des Écrivains et Artistes Révolutionnaires, and in 1935, he became a member of the French Communist Party. His paintings were often banned from exhibitions because of “political incorrectness”. Throughout his long life, Taslitzky depicted the world in all the diversity of its displays, ordeals, hopes, and emotions. During the Second World War, the painter’s mother died in Auschwitz. He joined the French Resistance, was arrested in 1944 by supporters of the collaborationist Vichy government, and was sent to Buchenwald.

According to Taslitzky, he survived in the concentration camp thanks to his drawing. A year after the end of the war, the artist’s friend Louis Aragon published a book of his drawings made in Buchenwald on sheets of letter paper stolen from the camp’s administrative office. They depicted the faces of exhausted prisoners as well as the savage faces of their executioners. Taslitzky continued his work after the war with strong responses to contemporary challenges. The painting Escalator in Paris Subway at Night belongs to the golden period of his pre-war creative life. In 1935, Taslitzky became the secretary of the Association of Painters and Sculptors of the Parisian House of Culture. In his works during this time, he depicted the social life of the pre-war period.

In this painting, the artist forces the dynamics of the composition in order to make it actively influence the public as a poster would, with an eye on social cinematography of the late 1920s – early 1930s.