This work is from a portfolio of 12 prints entitled Opposing Forms. Known primarily for her work as a sculptor, Dame Barbara Hepworth also produced numerous works on paper. Many of the themes and formal characteristics found in her sculptures are echoed in these screenprints.

Curved forms in the prints are particularly reminiscent of aspects of Hepworth’s sculptures, as are the circles – ancient symbols as old as the Cornish stone megaliths that inspired her. It is not always clear in her prints whether the white areas are forms in themselves or voids; the ‘empty’ spaces in her sculptures were arguably as important to her work as the physical matter itself. The curved grid in Winter Solstice echoes the taut strings in many of her sculptural works, which acted as an indicator of tension between forms.

Although superficially abstract, Hepworth also regarded her prints as embodying the different relationships between forms and figures.

Opposition, particularly between male and female forms, is a recurring theme in her work.

Hepworth communicated about how her gendered position underpinned her work:

"I do not believe that women are in competition with men. I believe that they have a sensibility, a perception and a contribution to make which is complementary to the masculine and which completes the total experience of life. … [a] whole range of formal perception belonging to feminine experience".