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Lot Essay
A prolific printmaker throughout his lifetime, Benton Spruance created over five hundred lithographs in his career. Like many artists found in the Schwartz collection, Spruance focused primarily on depicting the challenges and dramas of modern life in his prints from the 1930s. Of particular interest to the artist was the danger created by the introduction of the automobile into the urban landscape. Traffic Control is considered to be the artist’s most important print, showcasing the artist’s mastery of the lithography to illustrate the frenzied and congested city street.
In a letter to Carl Zigrosser, Spruance wrote, "I am completing the Traffic Control for this reason, that aided by you, I've put on stone three subjects not being done by anyone else - football, automobiles and fencing. And while I'm well aware that their perpetuity as art forms depends on everything but subject - still they sort of form a contribution, don't they?" (Abernethy, Lloyd M., Benton Spruance: The Artist and the Man, London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1988, p. 41.)
In a letter to Carl Zigrosser, Spruance wrote, "I am completing the Traffic Control for this reason, that aided by you, I've put on stone three subjects not being done by anyone else - football, automobiles and fencing. And while I'm well aware that their perpetuity as art forms depends on everything but subject - still they sort of form a contribution, don't they?" (Abernethy, Lloyd M., Benton Spruance: The Artist and the Man, London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1988, p. 41.)