Saul Steinberg

by Joel Smith

"Best known for his barbed and brilliant art for The New Yorker, Saul Steinberg (1914-1999) did much more. He executed public murals, designed fabrics and stage sets, was an inventive collagist and printmaker, and turned his magic touch to the fields of painting, sculpture, advertising, and even wartime propaganda. This is the first comprehensive look at Steinberg's contribution to twentieth-century art, which was that of a modern-day illuminator, putting word and image in play to create art that spoke to the eyes, and minds, or readers." "An introduction by poet Charles Simic tracks the origins of Steinberg's darkly comic sensibility in the "Balkan bazaar" of the artist's native Romania. Joel Smith shows how architectural training and an early rise to fame as a cartoonist in fascist-era Milan honed Steinberg's gift for subtle graphic invention, and explores why one of the most visible, prolific, potent, and cosmopolitan careers in postwar American art has so thoroughly evaded serious