Saul Steinberg

Saul Steinberg (1914–1999) was a Romanian-born American artist and cartoonist celebrated for his distinctive and witty visual commentary on modern life. Best known for his contributions to The New Yorker magazine, Steinberg dedicated a life to the act of drawing, which he defined as ‘a way of reasoning on paper’.

Steinberg was born in Râmnicu Sărat, Romania, in 1914. Steinberg studied architecture in Milan before fleeing Europe during World War II. He arrived in the United States in 1942, where his unique blend of artistic and architectural training quickly garnered attention. Steinberg’s work first appeared in The New Yorker in 1941, and he would go on to contribute more than 85 covers and hundreds of drawings for the magazine over the next six decades.

Steinberg’s line drawings, simple yet profound, often imbued with a dry humour that critiqued social norms and human behaviour. His ability to capture complex ideas with minimalistic drawings made him a master of visual storytelling. One of his most famous works, the 1976 cover for The New Yoker, View of the World from 9th Avenue, humorously depicted a New York-centric perspective of the world and remains an iconic piece of American pop culture.

In addition to his drawings for The New Yorker and other publications including Fortune, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, Saul Steinberg created a diverse body of work, including paintings, prints and lithographs. In 1946, he received critical acclaim during the Fourteen Americans show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where he was exhibited alongside Arshile Gorky, Isamu Noguchi, Robert Motherwell and others. In 1958 Steinberg created The Americans, a monumental, over 70-meter-long mural-collage for the United Staties pavilion at the Brussels World’s Fair.

Saul Steinberg died in 1999 at the age of 84. Steinberg’s work has been exhibited in major museums worldwide, and his influence on the next generation of cartoonists, illustrators and artists is undeniable. His works belong in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art and more.