Famed worldwide for giving graphic definition to the postwar age, Saul Steinberg (1914-1999) had one of the most remarkable careers in American art. While renowned for the covers and drawings that appeared in The New Yorker for nearly six decades, he was equally acclaimed for the drawings, paintings, prints, collages, and sculptures he exhibited internationally in galleries and museums.
Steinberg crafted a rich and ever-evolving idiom that found full expression through these parallel yet integrated careers. Such many-leveled art, however, resists conventional critical categories. “I don’t quite belong to the art, cartoon or magazine world, so the art world doesn’t quite know where to place me,” he said. 1 He was 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.
Source: Sheila Schwartz / The Saul Steinberg Foundation.
Selected works from the 1970s period (like Three Landscapes, Album, or Airmail shown here) present Saul Steinberg’s wonderfully unique, worldly perspective, shaped by his experiences as an immigrant, New Yorker, and discerning traveler both within and outside of the US.
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS WITH STEINBERG WORKS (SELECTED)
Akron Art Museum, Ohio
Albright-Knox Art Museum, Buffalo, New York
American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York
The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois
Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York
Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan
Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris, France
Fondation Folon, La Hulpe, Belgium
Fondation Alberto Giacometti, Paris, France
Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris, France
Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul-de Vence, France
Hamburger Kunsthalle, Germany
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
The Jewish Museum, New York
Library of Congress, Washington, DC
The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden
Morgan Library & Museum, New York
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania
Portland Art Museum, Maine
Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor
Walker Art Museum, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut
BOOKS ABOUT STEINBERG (Selected)
2021 Jessica R. Feldman, Saul Steinberg’s Literary Journeys: Nabokov, Joyce, and Others. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press
2016 Will Norman. Transatlantic Aliens: Modernism, Exile, and Culture in Midcentury America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press
2014 Joel Smith, introduction. Saul Steinberg: 100th Anniversary Exhibition. The Pace Gallery and Pace/MacGill
2013 Melissa Renn, Andreas Prinzing, Iain Topliss, et al. Saul Steinberg: The Americans. Cologne: Museum Ludwig
2012 Bair, Deidre. Saul Steinberg: A Biography. Nan A. Talese/Doubleday
2009 Saul Steinberg. L'Écriture visuelle. Strasbourg: Musée Tomi Ungerer
2006 Joel Smith, with an introduction by Charles Simic. Saul Steinberg: Illuminations. New Haven and London: Yale University Press
2005 Iain Topliss, The Comic Worlds of Peter Arno, William Steig, Charles Addams, and Saul Steinberg. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press
2005 Joel Smith, with an introduction by Ian Frazier. Steinberg at The New Yorker. New York: Harry N. Abrams