By the late 1970's, Frank Stella shifted his focus away from the flat modernist picture plane so integral to his breakthrough black paintings and shaped canvases. He also began to admit outside references into his minimalist approach, finding formal inspiration in the architecture of Polish wooden synagogues destroyed during World War II. Using photographs and plans of these now obliterated structures, Stella began to collapse sculpture and architecture into his constructions. He continued to be engaged by Jewish subjects in "The Butcher Came and Slew the Ox", one of a series of twelve prints inspired by El Lissitzky's "Had Gadya" series (1919). Stella freely abstracts Lissitzky's folk-like illustrations for the parable Had Gadya, a ditty traditionally sung at the end of the Passover seder. Stella's explosive mixed-media improvisations on Lissitzky's imagery convey the emotive force of both the parable and the earlier artist's illustrations.