Description

Robert Rauschenberg began his printmaking career by collaborating with the New York–based publisher Universal Limited Art Editions. The shop’s founder, Tatyana Grosman, inspired a revival of lithography in the United States by inviting contemporary artists to experiment at her Long Island home. In this portrait of Grosman, Rauschenberg used multiple printing stones to suggest the layered visual aesthetic of a collage. He deliberately combined fine art and mass-produced images, including expressive painterly marks and a photograph of Grosman, to comment on the breakdown between these categories in American culture.