A band of large color fields, in blue, green, and burnt orange, runs across the center of an otherwise blank white panel, each one built from vertical plastic strips set into the wood support so its color shifts as a viewer changes position. The wide white margin above and below concentrates the optical activity into a single horizontal band, giving the piece a directness rare in Cruz-Diez's later, more elaborate work. It is executed in mixed media on wood, consistent with his early-period studio practice, and signed by the artist verso.

Cruz-Diez's work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, the Centre Pompidou, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Physichromie 250 dates to the years just after the artist settled in Paris and began exhibiting internationally, making it an early document of the ideas about color and perception that would occupy him for the rest of his career.