The series was made at a time when Goeritz was developing his interest in religious art as a mode of resistance to what he perceived as a general state of decadence in the art world at the time. Goeritz had been interested in religious themes such as the cross and the divine hand throughout his career – particularly after his arrival in Mexico from Germany in 1949 – these later works pursued a different brand of mysticism as expressed in his manifesto ‘L’art Prière contre l’art merde’. In this manifesto, published on the occasion of his exhibition at the Iris Clert Gallery in Paris in 1960, he protested against individualism, materialism, intellectual egocentrism, rationalism, trends and the art world in general, to propose l’art prière (prayer art) as the antidote to vanity and ambition. This was an art of the ideal and the mystic, of love and belief, of form and colour as expressions of adoration, of the metaphysical power of the monochrome and of emotional experience. Goeritz described his works as a form of ‘plastic prayer’.