Among the world's most influential American artists of the post World War II period, Jasper Johns (1930- ) is also widely regarded as one of the greatest printmakers of our time.  Since the mid-1950s, Jasper Johns' work has continually re-presented and recast items in the common culture.  Flags, letters of the alphabet, body parts, cans and numerals are some of the iconic motifs that Johns has used throughout his career and which have come to be the subjects of many of Johns' sometimes most complex compositions.  Jasper Johns was born in Augusta, Georgia.  He attend art school for a brief time.  His generally considered a self-taught artist and is most frequently associated with Pop-Art subjects and his Minimalist style.  Johns has achieved a commanding position in 20th century American art, and, along with Picasso, has contributed immeasurably to the medium of printmaking and its importance in the history of art.

Jasper Johns began producing lithographs in 1960, as his style became increasingly more abstract combining bold colors with numerals, letters and other symbols.  His use of two-dimensional objects and rejection of emotional expression departed radically from the Abstract Expressionism that then dominated American art.  His earlier works depicting flags had achieved the distinction of being a key element in the development of Minimalism with their focus on the linear and the uniform.  His Minimalist style was now becoming de-emphasized under the influence of Surrealism and Dadaism.  The quotidian nature of his subject matter broke with contemporary subjects and focused on the importance of works on paper that echoed the imagery and themes of his paintings; it was the catalyst for a new "peintre-graveuer" period of American art.