1976

March 29, his most famous New Yorker cover, View of the World from 9th Avenue, hits the newsstands. He gives the magazine permission to issue it as a poster; 25,000 are printed over the next two years. Imitations are produced worldwide, as are copies. “The most notorious picture I have done, the most famous, the one that has been plagiarized and abused so often.” Henceforth, his art will often be exclusively (mis)identified with View of the World.

May, awarded AIA Medal by the American Institute of Architects for his “meticulous draftsmanship, inspired imagination, and satirical gifts [which] have shown us our buildings and ourselves from a new perspective.”

June, receives an honorary doctorate from Harvard University, inscribed to “reverendis Inspectoribus Saul Steinberg.”

June 27, departs for Paris; also visits Milan and Bergamo, returning to New York on July 10.

November 11, his close friend Alexander Calder dies. At the memorial service held in December at the Whitney Museum, he fondly recalls: “One evening…Sandy said something I couldn’t hear. He was seated and I was standing. I bent nearer and then…sat on his knee to hear him better. I thought afterwards that I hadn’t sat on a man’s knee in sixty years, and that this was the only man so happy and so innocent as to give me and everybody this simple and loving familiarity.”

Calder is the first of several friends who will die over the next years, adding to ST’s increasing tendency to depression.

November 17, opening of his solo exhibition at the Betty Parsons and Sidney Janis galleries, New York.