Breakthrough: Prints from ULAE

Lee Bontecou, Carroll Dunham, Marisol Escobar, Helen Frankenthaler, Jasper Johns, Barnett Newman, Robert Rauschenberg, Larry Rivers, James Rosenquist, Kiki Smith, Lisa Yuskavage David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of prints from Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE), a fine art print publisher established in 1957 that influenced a printmaking renaissance in the United States during the 1960s. Organized in collaboration with ULAE and drawing from its archive as well as private collections, the exhibition features works by Lee Bontecou, Carroll Dunham, Helen Frankenthaler, Jasper Johns, Marisol, Barnett Newman, Robert Rauschenberg, Larry Rivers, Kiki Smith, Terry Winters, and Lisa Yuskavage, among others. The exhibition anticipates the seventieth anniversary of ULAE's founding and is supplemented by a display of archival material documenting its rich history. The exhibition highlights the wide-reaching artistic community fostered by ULAE across generations since its founding by Tatyana Grosman on Long Island, where it continues to operate today. For nearly seven decades, artists and printers have gathered there to experiment, collaborate, and exchange ideas. Grosman and her husband, Maurice, settled in New York in 1943 after fleeing war in Europe. When Maurice suffered a heart attack in 1955, Grosman made and sold reproductions of paintings to support them, with the ambition of publishing illustrated books. Encouraged by the Museum of Modern Art's curator of prints, William Lieberman, and prompted by the discovery of Bavarian lithographic stones in her own yard, she began inviting artists to create original lithographs. The workshop would later grow to incorporate intaglio, letter, and offset presses. After Grosman's passing in 1982, master printer Bill Goldston invited a rising generation of artists to make their first prints at ULAE—continuing a tradition that endures today. A selection of work from the late 1950s through the 1970s will highlight ULAE's earliest publications, which set the tone for the workshop's creative ambition. The exhibition features a complete set of ULAE's first publication, Stones (1957–1959), a collaborative portfolio in the spirit of the French livre d'artiste. The twelve lithographs feature original illustrations by Larry Rivers and poems by Frank O'Hara. Inspired by his experience, Rivers encouraged other artists to print at ULAE, including Helen Frankenthaler, Marisol, and Grace Hartigan, each of whom are represented here by works in a variety of processes spanning lithography, intaglio, and woodcut. Works by Lee Bontecou and Robert Rauschenberg, printed from the same lithographic stone, will be on view in the exhibition. These works share a distinctive diagonal line across their respective compositions, reflecting a crack in the stone. Bontecou used the stone to create her seminal print, Fourth Stone (1963) and Rauschenberg later used the stone for two lithographs including Breakthrough II (1965). Among the earliest artists to work at ULAE, Jasper Johns developed a close relationship with Grosman and garnered wide recognition for the workshop, inviting artists including Robert Rauschenberg to make prints there. Johns has worked in a variety of techniques at the workshop since 1960, often reworking plates or drawing over proofs as he pushed the technical and conceptual boundaries of the medium. Formal concepts inherent to printmaking, such as repetition and mirroring, have become hallmarks of Johns's broader practice. An adjacent gallery will display works from the 1980s through early 2000s by Carroll Dunham, Kiki Smith, Terry Winters, and Lisa Yuskavage. These artists brought with them unique styles that synthesized organic forms with glimpses of figuration, distinguishing their work from ULAE's earlier association with pop art while also pushing their broader practices into new terrain. Among the earliest of this generation was Dunham, who once recalled: "Bill Goldston introduced me to printmaking in late 1983 by inviting me to come out to the studio at ULAE and explore lithography.… I really have no idea what my paintings would have become without this experience." Smith, one of the foremost printmakers working today, poetically investigates the body's relationship to spirituality, myth, and the natural world. On view will be Smith's Pool of Tears II (2000) pulled from one of the largest etching plates the workshop could accommodate, underscoring the creative ambition that defines ULAE's legacy. This long history of collaboration has inspired a number of leading painters and sculptors, including Marina Adams, Joe Bradley, Martin Puryear, and Charline von Heyl to explore printmaking, embracing its creative potential and reviving a centuries-old artistic medium for the contemporary moment. In celebration of the workshop's lasting legacy, works by these artists and others, including newly published editions, are featured online to coincide with the exhibition. About Universal Limited Art Editions Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) is celebrated for its nearly seventy years of steadfast dedication to supporting the work of contemporary artists and sustaining the tradition of fine art printmaking in the United States. It was founded in 1957 in a small cottage on Long Island by Tatyana Grosman (1904–1982) as a printmaking workshop dedicated to fine art lithography. She established a guiding ethos centered entirely on the artist's vision by offering exclusive and nearly limitless access to the lithography press. ULAE soon gained recognition for its collaboration with young artists of the sixties, including the luminaries Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, and led the way for a revival in the medium in the United States. Bill Goldston assumed the position of director in the early 1980s and followed Grosman's precedent by inviting younger generations of artists. He built a larger, state-of-the-art printmaking facility staffed by several highly skilled master printers to ensure ULAE could meet their ambitions. To this day, and now under the direction of Grosman's goddaughter and Goldston's daughter, Larissa Goldston, ULAE continues to collaborate with the most prominent and innovative artists of our times in lithography, intaglio, woodcut, and digital processes. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, collects all of ULAE's editions, from its first to the most recent. There have been several major exhibitions of work created at ULAE, including a commemoration of its first twenty-five years at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1990, a celebration of its fortieth anniversary at the Corcoran Art Gallery, Washington, DC, in 1997, and a celebration of its fiftieth anniversary at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2007.