Jasper Johns has for nearly three decades played a central role in contemporary American art, producing paintings, drawings, and prints of exceptional stature. Having achieved a commanding position as a painter in the tumultuous New York art scene of the late 1950s, Johns began to work in lithography at Tatyana Grosman's Universal Limited Art Editions in 1960. The resulting prints demonstrated for the first time in this medium the vitality of the new American art. For Johns, printmaking has continued to be an important part of his total creative output-as it was for such other major modern artists as Munch and Pablo Picasso. There is little question that he has contributed more, qualitatively, than any living artist to the printed form of art. Castelman, "Jasper Johns: A Print Retrospective," The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1986.
