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New Yorker New Yorker: The Life and Art of Saul Steinberg

Originally published in December 2008 in ILLUSTRATION - Winter 2008 Issue 18

NEW YORKER STYLE – Unmasking the Remarkable Visions of Saul Steinberg
Saul Steinberg is perhaps best known as an artist for The New Yorkerhe where he created eighty-nine covers, numerous drawings and cartoons throughout his nearly sixty years with the magazine.

Romanian-born Saul Steinberg (1914-1999) has been variously described as a writer who draws, a one-man school of architectural caricature, and a satirist of modernity. He is perhaps best known as an artist for The New Yorker where he created eighty-nine covers, numerous drawings and cartoons throughout his nearly sixty years with the magazine. Today Steinberg’s artistic legacy is a complex amalgam of styles, sentiments and ready made clichés ranging from the satirical and political to the humorous and surreal. He has given us a conversational, but almost wordless version of twentieth century lives lived in urban and rural landscapes. His visual inventory consists of sophisticated views of culture, religion, ethnic groups, architectural styles, social mores, war and biography. Throughout, there is a doggedness to convey the ordinary as extraordinary.

See the entire article in the Winter 2008 issue of ILLUSTRATION magazine by opening the PDF with the text and illustrations.