Long regarded as one of Hayter's most important prints, Combat was the artist's expression of his distress at the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. In a letter of 1942 he explained that the print contained 'Lines of tension, compression, flow, movement; explosive centres; lines of suspension, of pouring, of flame, of successive displacement of forms, etc.'

A master of technical innovation, Hayter is known to have explored this process on other occasions.

In a letter to Robert Isaacson, Hayter mentioned 'plaster casts of the plate' being made at Palaio Kastritsa in Corfu. The present example is a rare and hithertofor unknown impression and given its age and fragility in a remarkable state of preservation.