Altitudes

Frankenthaler pursued similar explorations of line, color, and form in both painting and prints, allowing for discoveries in one medium to echo in the other. In 1961, she collaborated on her first print with Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) and its visionary founder Tatyana Grosman. She later returned in 1978 to produce Altitudes (1978). ULAE established itself by first specializing in lithography, a printing process in which the flat surface of the matrix—a smooth

stone or metal plate—allows ink to be absorbed into the paper. In Altitudes, the ink has soaked into the paper at varying degrees, creating the impression of graduated layers of color floating on the print's surface. The print, with its fluid formations, earthy tones, and rust-stained surface, suggests a stark landscape, a ridge of mountains viewed through the clouds, or an aerial view of a churning river delta. Stylistically, the lithograph recalls Frankenthaler’s acclaimed painting Mountains and Sea (1952), which evokes the rugged, wild coasts of Nova Scotia created by the artist pooling and soaking paint onto raw canvas.