1960s Introduction

Around 1960, Steinberg’s life and art underwent significant change. He and Hedda Sterne separated, though they remained married and close friends. Steinberg became involved with Sigrid Spaeth, a German photography and art student working in New York. Their often fraught relationship endured until her death in 1996. In 1959, he had purchased a country house in Springs, within the town of Amagansett on the eastern end of Long Island, which became a refuge from the hectic social and professional life he led in the city. The focus of his art also shifted as he gave up most commercial assignments to concentrate on art for gallery exhibitions and drawings for The New Yorker.³⁷ The number of gallery and museum exhibitions grew. (Steinberg would have more than eighty one-artist shows in his lifetime). And his covers began to appear regularly in The New Yorker, with many taking on a political, sociological, or cultural cast, passing judgment on the world as he saw it and, not incidentally, reflecting the contents of the magazine.³⁸