14
●
DAVID SMITH
Don Quixote
.
Lithograph with hand-coloring in water-
color on off-white wove paper, 1952.
455x605 mm; 18x23
3
/
4
inches, full margins.
First state (of 2). Edition of approximately
only 27. Signed, titled, dated, dedicated and
inscribed “E 27” (?) in ink, lower margin
(the ink faded). Printed by Michael Ponce
de Léon and Margaret Lowengrund, New
York. Published by the artist, New York.
A superb, richly-inked impression of this
extremely scarce,earlyAbstract Expressionist
lithograph.
Sarah Suzuki, Curator, Department of
Prints and Illustrated Books,The Museum
of Modern Art, and the curator of the
Rock Paper Scissors
exhibition of Abstract
Expressionism at The MoMA, October
3, 2010-April 25, 2011, writes, “Smith
began making prints after taking classes
at the Art Students League in NewYork.
He made a series of linoleum cuts of his
Brooklyn neighborhood in the 1920s,
Surrealist-influenced etchings in the
1930s and 1940s, and a group of
lithographs withWoodstock, NewYork-
based printer Margaret Lowengrund in
the 1950s, including this one.
Don Quixote
was actually Smith’s first print, and has a
great story behind it that underscores the
sometimes-complicated chemistry of
printmaking, and the fact that successful
endeavors are often aided by quite a bit of
luck. Lowengrund had just taken on an
assistant, a young artist named Michael
Ponce de Léon, who actually had no
experience making lithographs. Ponce de
Léon’s first assignment was to assist Smith.
The two men met, worked, chatted over
beers, and when asked by Smith to proceed
with the printing, Ponce de Léon couldn’t
bring himself to admit that he’d never
printed a lithograph before. So he forged
ahead, and without running water in the
studio, improvised by printing with the
copious amount of beer they had on hand.”
According to Ponce de Léon,“When Margaret arrived ready to start the printing and was
told that we had already printed the first stone she almost collapsed, and in great
desperation she rushed out to the drying pile of our first prints only to discover to her