During my first year in college, in 1961-62, I saw in the University of Louisville Bookstore a print of Pablo Picasso’s drawing of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza tilting at windmills, a sketch which he had rendered on August 10, 1955. It looks to have a stark simplicity at first glance. This impression yields to fascination as the spare strokes of Picasso’s sketch are observed in more detail. It is a powerful drawing by a colossally talented man and I fell in love with it on the spot. Where Picasso’s cubist art was, for me, only of passing interest, this little drawing spoke to me. I tilt at windmills as a life’s work and always have, in one way or another! I bought the print on the spot, using up my lunch money for the month to do so, and put it up over my desk at home. Later, I had it framed, as it was beginning to wear.
Don Elkins moved in with me in November of 1968. The drawing was hanging over my desk and he asked about it. I told him the bare bones of the story of the man of La Mancha and how his skewed vision of the world made it a beautiful place and he, an heroic figure. He mused that it was a perfect image for the work we were then beginning to do, since we were dreaming impossible dreams together. We decided that Picasso’s sketch would be our logo. The image was in the public domain, so we were free to use it.
Since the beginning of our publishing in 1976 we have used that little image as our publishing logo. And we’re still tilting at windmills here at L/L Research with great joy and thanksgiving for the inspiration of that little sketch.
Carla L. Rueckert
July 9, 2008