Among Judith Bernstein’s most iconic works are her large biomorphic screw drawings, begun in 1969. Rooted in her time at Yale where, as one of only three women in her graduate cohort, she encountered the crude sexual graffiti of the men's bathrooms and recognised in it a raw, unmediated index of male psychology, the image of the screw emerged from her interest in the oppressive verb ‘screwed’ becoming symbolic not only of those in power bearing down on others, but of Bernstein reclaiming that power as a woman.

Executed in charcoal on paper at monumental scale, the works appropriate the hardware screw as a phallic symbol of oppression. The drawings are physically overwhelming – her charcoal screws morph into massive phallic presences that climb the walls of whatever space they inhabit, filling the viewer’s field of vision. The medium itself is significant – charcoal is abrasive and physical, and Bernstein wields it with what New York Times critic Ken Johnson called ‘bravura performances of draftsmanship’ and ‘masterpieces of feminine protest’.

The anti-war dimension is ever-present. Detaching the phallic symbol from any individual personhood and mounting it as a standalone totem of military violence and industrial extraction, Bernstein confronts the abuse of power. In the screw drawings there is blatant sexual expression fused with anger and frustration. The censorship of Horizontal, a screw drawing banned from a Philadelphia civic exhibition in 1974, brought the series to wider attention and, paradoxically, helped secure Bernstein’s reputation. The work is now in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The screw drawings have continued to evolve across more than five decades, remaining the spine of Bernstein’s practice, and a lens through which her subsequent work can be viewed.