Saul Steinberg:
Brilliant Witty Inventive Cerebral
June 7 – October 5, 2024
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.
Saul Steinberg: Brilliant Witty Inventive Cerebral will also include a selection of his The New Yorker covers.
Lead Curator: Dan Mills
Curatorial Intern: Jensen Nida ’24
Cover image: Untitled, 1967, ink on Passantino Brand sheet music paper, 19 x 14 in., Gift of The Saul Steinberg Foundation © The Saul Steinberg Foundation/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2022.11.7
