Kline's bold gestural works in black enamel on paper share the same mid century American abstract sensibility and monochrome directness found in this piece. His exploration of stark black forms against open ground closely mirrors Smith's spray enamel approach to sketching sculptural mass.

Noguchi similarly used drawing and sketching as a bridge between two and three dimensional thinking, producing minimalist gestural studies that anticipated sculptural form. His abstract preparatory works share the same mid century exploration of biomorphic and structural shapes in reduced compositions.

Chillida produced deeply gestural monochrome works on paper that functioned as meditations on sculptural weight and spatial tension, much like this Raven Series sketch. His black abstract forms rendered with bold directness echo the same minimalist and exploratory quality Smith demonstrates here.