Saul Steinberg | |
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| Born | Saul Erik Steinberg (1914-06-15)June 15, 1914 |
| Died | May 12, 1999(1999-05-12) (aged 84) |
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| Known for | The New Yorker |
| Style | Conceptual art |
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| Website | SaulSteinberg |
Saul Steinberg (June 15, 1914,Rm. Sărat,Romania – May 12, 1999,New York City)[1][2] was a Romanian-born Americanartist, best known for his work forThe New Yorker, most notablyView of the World from 9th Avenue. He described himself as "a writer who draws".[3][2][4]
Steinberg was born in Râmnicu Sărat,Buzău County, Romania to a family of Jewish descent.[5] In 1932, he entered theUniversity of Bucharest. In 1933, he enrolled at thePolytechnic University of Milan to study architecture; he received his degree in 1940. In 1936, he began contributing cartoons to the humor newspaperBertoldo.[6][7][8][9] Two years later, theanti-Semitic racial laws promulgated by theFascist government forced him to start seeking refuge in another country.
In 1941, he fled to theDominican Republic, where he spent a year awaiting a US visa. By then, his drawings had appeared in several US periodicals; his first contribution toThe New Yorker was published in October 1941. Steinberg arrived in New York City in July 1942; within a few months he received a commission in theUS Naval Reserve and was then seconded to theOffice of Strategic Services (OSS). He worked for the Morale Operations division in China, North Africa, and Italy. Shipped back to Washington in 1944, he married the Romanian-born painterHedda Sterne.[10][2]
After World War II, Steinberg continued to publish drawings inThe New Yorker and other periodicals, includingFortune,Vogue,Mademoiselle, andHarper's Bazaar.[11] At the same time, he embarked on an exhibition career in galleries and museums.[12] In 1946, he was included in the critically acclaimed "Fourteen Americans" show atThe Museum of Modern Art, New York, exhibiting along withArshile Gorky,Isamu Noguchi, andRobert Motherwell, among others. Steinberg went on to have more than 80 one-artist shows in galleries and museums throughout the US, Europe, and South America. He was affiliated with theBetty Parsons andSidney Janis galleries in New York and theGalerie Maeght in Paris. A dozen museums and institutions have in-depth collections of his work, and examples are included in the holdings of more than eighty other public collections.
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He and Sterne separated in 1960, but remained close friends.[13][14] However, toward the end of Sterne's life, she called their marriage license “the first of Saul’s phony documents, maybe.”[15]
Steinberg's long, multifaceted career encompassed works in many media and appeared in different contexts. In addition to magazine publications and gallery art, he produced advertising art,photoworks, textiles, stage sets, and murals. Given this many-leveled output, his work is difficult to position within the canons ofpostwar art history. He himself defined the problem: "I don't quite belong to the art, cartoon or magazine world, so the art world doesn't quite know where to place me."[16]
He is best described as a "modernist without portfolio, constantly crossing boundaries into uncharted visual territory. In subject matter and styles, he made no distinction between high and low art, which he freely conflated in an oeuvre that is stylistically diverse yet consistent in depth and visual imagination."[16]
After Steinberg's death on May 12, 1999, The Saul Steinberg Foundation was established in accordance with the artist's will. The Foundation's mission is "to facilitate the study and appreciation of Saul Steinberg's contribution to20th-century art" and to "serve as a resource for the international curatorial-scholarly community as well as the general public".
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