Tanya

After Russian-born Tatyana Grosman and her artist husband, Maurice, moved from New York City to a small cottage in the town of West Islip on Long Island in 1955, the couple decided to earn their living by creating silk-screen reproductions of paintings by artists such as Grandma Moses and Marc Chagall. They soon changed their focus, however, and dedicated themselves to original works of art following a visit to William Lieberman, who was then a curator at the Museum of Modern Art. Inspired by her love of books, Tatyana decided to bring to America the French tradition of livre d’artistes (artists’ books). She purchased an old lithographic press for fifteen dollars, found two lithographic stones in her front yard, and thus was born the print studio known as Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE). Working with artists like Larry Rivers, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, and Cy Twombly, to name just a new, Tatyana Grosman and the staff of ULAE created an environment in which artists could experiment with lithography, and later with intaglio methods. Edwin Schlossberg, recalled of Tatyana Grosman, “She seemed to reach and recognize exactly the you that you always wanted someone to know . . . to give it full range to be what it was and could be. . . . Tatyana was in love with the people with whom she worked.” It was Tatyana’s vision and tenacity that made ULAE one of the finest print publishers in the country.