Saul Steinberg: Brilliant Witty Inventive Cerebral is drawn from the museum’s collection of the artist’s works, a gift of The Saul Steinberg Foundation. The ten prints, four drawings, and one watercolor, created between 1965 and 1984, represent many of the playful and intriguing juxtapositions of subjects, styles, and inventive graphic means he is recognized for.
Saul Steinberg (b. Romania 1914, d. New York 1999) is known worldwide for his drawings reproduced in The New Yorker magazine. From the 1940s until the late 1990s, he created over 80 covers and 1200 internal drawings for the magazine, many of which have since been repeatedly reprinted.
During a career that spanned seven decades, Steinberg also created collages, public murals, theater sets, and paintings and sculptures for galleries and exhibitions. However, he always returned to works on paper, blurring the lines between high art and low, and enchanting viewers with his seemingly endless visual vocabulary. Defining drawing as “a way of reasoning on paper,” he created a graphic vocabulary that includes collage, the juxtaposition of styles, letters and words, the line, and stamps. His remarkable oeuvre is replete with works that could be described as absurd, cerebral, witty, childlike, hilarious, insightful, and a painful critique of contemporary life.
The exhibition presents Steinberg’s multidimensional exploration of still life in drawing, lithography and wood relief sculpture, dating from the time he built his East Hampton studio in 1970 until his death in 1999. His colored pencil drawings of tabletop arrangements depict casual setups of art supplies, apples, vases of flowers, postcards of Matisse and Braque paintings, and beloved tin toys, family photographs, and a miniature porcelain vase he drew and carved repeatedly. The charm and nostalgia in these drawings is palpable and enduring.
The six large lithographs of intricate still lifes from 1970 reveal Steinberg’s mastery of yet another medium. Actual postcards of a favorite Cubist Braque, a lush Matisse still life, and even an authentic Japanese wood cut are collaged onto the complex multi-plate lithographs compositions, a witty play on trompe l’oeil. During the process of building his studio, Steinberg found inspiration in the discarded scrap wood, shingles and lumber, asking his carpenters to cut various blocks and shapes for use in the Table Top Reliefs he explored for two decades. One of those on view, titled Cabinet, was featured in his one-person show at the Whitney Museum in 1978. Steinberg also began to carve and whittle faux wood objects often embellishing them with colored drawing. Included in the array on display are books, a pencil box, hinged secret boxes, and decorative forms he would sometimes glue to larger montages.
In 1961, Saul Steinberg created an extraordinary graffiti decoration of the atrium of the Palazzina Mayer in Milan, commissioned by Studio BBPR, which was overseeing the renovation of the building. It was an important work that followed other similar projects the great artist had undertaken in the United States and Europe over the previous fifteen years.
Magic Ledger: The Drawings of Saul Steinberg, at the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, Bloomington, January 27-June 2, 2024
Based on gifts to the Museum from The Saul Steinberg Foundation, the exhibition presents drawings that combine Steinberg’s fantastic imagination and shrewd observation.
Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University Bloomington
Presented by Oklahoma State University Museum of Art, Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Saul Steinberg, a Romanian American artist, gained fame for his humorous illustrations in The New Yorker. However, his life was marked by adversity. Facing antisemitism in Romania, his family moved to Milan in 1933 where he worked briefly as an illustrator until Mussolini’s antisemitic ideas forced him to leave. After completing his architectural degree, he sought refuge in the Dominican Republic and began sending illustrations to US periodicals. By the time he arrived in New York City in 1942, his drawings were already a regular feature in The New Yorker. Steinberg became a US citizen and continued collaborating with The New Yorker while exhibiting his art worldwide. In 2021, the OSU Museum of Art received a significant donation of Steinberg’s work, showcased in the Line of Thought exhibition. Line of Thought explores the contrasts between the adversity Steinberg faced and the witty, satirical art he produced.
Saul Steinberg: Lines That Transform the Real World, at the ddd gallery in Kyoto, Japan, August 9 – October 15, 2023.
Design by Kijuro Yahagi
We are pleased to announce that our first major solo exhibition in Japan, held at ginza graphic gallery (ggg) from December 10 to March 12, 2021, will travel to Kyoto ddd Gallery.
The exhibition will feature a total of approximately 170 works, including posters donated by The Saul Steinberg Foundation, lithographs, etchings, and other valuable works , as well as reproductions of representative works, mainly drawings.
The works of Steinberg displayed at kyoto ddd gallery are mapped in 3D Cube, according to each perspective. Please choose any category that interests you, and enjoy Steinberg’s unique approach to his drawings, which are organized by keywords.
*Please note that it may take some time to load the page depending on network environment.
Saul Steinberg: Between Line and Text, at the National Gallery Prague, Czech Republic, May 24 – August 10, 2023.
Based on gifts to the Museum from The Saul Steinberg Foundation.
Saul Steinberg: Material of Interest– Drawings, Paintings, Objects, Prints and Plates, at The Drawing Room, East Hampton, New York, April 1- May 21, 2023
Saul Steinberg, at The Pace Gallery, Seoul, South Korea, March 31 – April 29, 2023.
“A Way of Reasoning on Paper”: The Art of Saul Steinberg, at the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Missouri, March 25-September 23, 2023
Based on gifts to the Museum from The Saul Steinberg Foundation.
Maske and Face/Maske und Gesichte: Inge Morath and Saul Steinberg, at the Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, Austria, February 25-June 18, 2023
At the Races with Saul Steinberg, at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, Saratoga Springs, New York, January 18-December 21, 2023.
Based on gifts to the Museum from The Saul Steinberg Foundation.
