Universal Limited Art Editions (Firm)

Universal Limited Art Editions, founded by Tatyana and Maurice Grosman, has been credited with the American revival of fine art lithography in the mid-20th century. In the1950s and 1960s, when New York was experiencing intense artistic activity and growth, Tatyana Grosman was an inspired visionary with the ability to choose and attract the best young artists to explore lithography at her home studio. She hired master printers - notably Robert Blackburn, Zigmunds Priede, Donn Steward, Keith Brintzenhofe, and Bill Goldston - who could take on the challenges of the artists' explorations, solving difficult technical problems and developing new techniques which pushed the boundaries of traditional printmaking.

Tatyana Grosman was born June 17, 1904, in Ekaterinburg, Russia. Her father, Semion Michailovitch Aguschewitsch, was a newspaper owner and publisher, who believed children should read only great literature. Soon after the October Revolution, the family was forced to leave Ekaterinburg; they spent time in Japan and Venice before settling in Dresden. Here Tatyana enrolled in the Dresden Academy of Applied Arts, where she met Maurice Grosman (1900-1976), a young student at the Academy of Fine Arts. They married in 1931, and moved to Paris, where they lived on Maurice's meager artist's income until 1941 when they were forced to hide from the Germans. In 1943 they were able to escape to New York City. Here Maurice gave drawing and painting lessons, and had several one-man shows. He also learned the technique of silkscreen printing, and made reproductions of modern paintings.

In 1955, Maurice suffered a severe heart attack, and Tatyana suddenly found herself responsible for their financial support. They moved from their Eighth Street studio to their summer cottage in West Islip, Long Island, where Tatyana started a business producing high quality silkscreens of artists' works. In 1957 she discovered two lithographic limestones in the walkway in her front yard, and from some neighbors she bought a used flat-bed lithography press for $15. Having recently read Monroe Wheeler's Modern Painters and Sculptors as Illustrators, Tatyana was very interested in collaborating with an artist and a poet to create a book. The Grosmans approached their friend Larry Rivers, who with poet Frank O'Hara, soon began work, with the aid of master printer Robert Blackburn (who had learned lithography on Harlem's Federal Art Project), on a two-year project which resulted in the first Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) publication, Stones, a thirteen page portfolio/book. Other artists were soon invited to make lithographs at the studio - Fritz Glarner, Sam Francis, Grace Hartigan, Jasper Johns, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Motherwell, Robert Rauschenberg, Jim Dine, Lee Bontecou, Barnett Newman, Marisol, James Rosenquist, Cy Twombly, Edwin Schlossberg, Claes Oldenburg, and R. Buckminster Fuller.

Until 1966 the ULAE studio only produced lithographs, but the artists were also interested in working in intaglio. Tatyana acquired a grant in 1966 that enabled her to establish an intaglio studio. In 1969 an offset press was acquired to produce high-quality posters and books that could subsidize the cost of the limited editions. The artists became intrigued with this new equipment, and the offset press was soon employed to produce print editions for Johns' Decoy (1971), Dine's Flaubert's Favorites (1972), and Rosenquist's Off the Continental Divide (1973-74).

When Maurice Grosman died in 1976, Tatyana encouraged her printer Bill Goldston to take charge of running the studio and the business. When Tatyana died in 1982, Goldston assumed responsibility for ULAE.

From the guide to the Universal Limited Art Editions Collection, 1967-1988, (Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin)