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From the beginning of his decades-long collaboration with the printer Ken Tyler in 1967, Stella embraced printmaking as a means of exploring variations on his current paintings. Color lithography offered a smoother, more anonymous surface and finish than painting could. His first prints at Gemini related to his stripe paintings and Notched-V canvases of the earlier 1960s.

The titles of his "V Series" of lithographs were derived from the names of historic ships, which themselves came from the world of flora and fauna. Itata is both a Chilean ship and a South American spider.