Tanguy moved to the United States after the outbreak of World War II in 1939. He lived with the American surrealist artist Kay Sage, first in New York and later in the small town of Woodbury, Connecticut. Although these new surroundings did not occasion a break in his style, Tanguy's tendency towards brighter color, which had already become apparent in his paintings of the 1930s, became more pronounced after his arrival in America.

All of the distinctive elements which characterize Tanguy's surrealist 'mindscapes' appear in Le prodigue: strange biomorphic forms which André Breton called être-objets inhabit a vast desert wasteland with a deep foreground plain and blurred horizon. Here the solid forms are rendered in bold, primary colors, possibly inspired by Tanguy's travels across Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico, whose landscapes which also had a profound impact on fellow surrealist Max Ernst.

The paintings completed during this period are among Tanguy's richest and most finely-wrought works. The artist often painted several canvases on the same theme. Le prodigue is linked to the group Le prodigue ne revient j'amais I-IV; in the former, however, the solid forms are far larger and dominate the landscape. The title refers to the story of the Prodigal Son in the Gospel of St. Luke, a subject to which other 20th Century artists such as Chagall, de Chirico, Ernst and Rouault also alluded in their work. Although Tanguy's forms are not personalized or detailed in their anatomy, the title character is almost recognizable in this painting. Nonetheless, Tanguy's imagery is not as specifically literary as that of the other illustionistic Surrealists. "If Tanguy's style is realistic, his visual poetry is abstract." (W. S. Rubin, Dada, Surrealism and their Heritage, New York, Museum of Modern Art exhibition catalogue, 1968, p. 102)

Early illustrations of this painting show a small ball-shaped object above the center of the composition, which, for unknown reasons, was later removed.