Andrea Liguori, Editor and Executive Director of the Diebenkorn Foundation, Oakland CA
diebenkorn.org

Preface

I owe thanks to artist, printer, and poet Lee Altman for sharing stories about working with Nathan Oliveira, who was a catalyst for Diebenkorn’s renewed interest in monotypes in the 1970s. Lee worked at Nathan Oliveira’s print workshop on the Stanford campus in the mid-1970s and printed the thirty-six monotypes Diebenkorn made there in 1975. Lee’s emails, sent during the dark months of Northern California wildfires and the pandemic shutdown, energized me with their poetic descriptions of laughter and joy in the studio. Lee’s firsthand accounts of Oliveira and Diebenkorn making monotypes together were motivating.

Bio

Lee Altman met Richard Diebenkorn at Stanford University in 1975. Altman, then a graduate student,  had been working for a year as an assistant and printer for Nathan Oliveira in the Stanford Art Department Graphics Room. Altman was awarded an MFA degree in 1976 and stepped into the additional role of teaching in the art department during Oliveira’s 1976–77 teaching sabbatical. In addition to printing Diebenkorn’s thirty-six Stanford monotypes, Altman’s print projects at Stanford between 1976–78 included prints and monotypes by Oliveira, Frank Lobdell, and Wayne Thiebaud. With Oliveira’s support, and in appreciation for Lee’s work on Oliveira’s behalf, Altman was able to continue working in the Stanford graphics room for an additional year. During this time he focused on his own artwork. After leaving Stanford Altman taught many art courses in multiple disciplines at several schools, including printmaking at UC Santa Cruz, Graphic Arts Workshop in San Francisco, California College of Arts, San Francisco Art Institute, and several other Northern California schools; and art history, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, filmmaking, and a seminar on “Greek and Christian Thought” at St. Mary’s College in Moraga (1992–2003). Lee lived for many years in Benicia, California, and has exhibited his paintings, works on paper, and prints in several museums and galleries throughout Northern California for over forty years. Altman has published two volumes of poetry: Ruins of Index and Other Places (2017) and O Tender Path: Salt Poems (2019). He now makes his home in Fort Bragg, California.