May 12: Saul Steinberg

Romanian-born cartoonist and graphic artist Saul Steinberg died at 84 on this date in 1999. A refugee from fascism in Italy, he worked for U.S. military intelligence during World War II while establishing a lifelong relationship with the New Yorker magazine, which had sponsored his entry into the U.S. after publishing one of his cartoons in 1941. Over the course of more than half a century, Steinberg created eighty-seven New Yorker covers as well as thirty-three cartoons and seventy-one artist’s portfolios. More than eighty museum shows of his art have been mounted around the world, including a retrospective at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art in 1978 and a posthumous show at the Institute for Modern Art in Valencia, Spain in 2002. To hear him speaking about his art and philosophy, look below.

“I am among the few who continue to draw after childhood is ended, continuing and perfecting childhood drawing — without the traditional interruption of academic training.” -Saul Steinberg