Saul Steinberg

Saul Steinberg was born in Romania in 1914.
In 1933 after a year studying philosophy
at the University of Bucharest
he enrolled in the Politecnico
in Milan as an architecture student.




The precision of architectural drafting
taught him the potential
of a spare two-dimensional line
to describe a complex three-dimensional form.

During the 1930s
Steinberg applied this lesson to the cartoons
he began publishing in Milan
for the twice-weekly satirical magazine Bertoldo.
The incisive wit of these images
would distinguish much of his art.



By 1940 Steinberg’s drawings were appearing
in Life magazine.

The following year
anti-Jewish racial laws in Fascist Italy
forced him to flee.





While in Santo Domingo in 1941
awaiting a US visa
he started publishing regularly in The New Yorker.



Throughout his long career
he used drawing to think about the semantics of art
reconfiguring stylistic signs into a new language
suited to the fabricated temper of modern life.
He was, the "inspector,"
seeing through every false front,
every pretense.







Sometimes with affection
sometimes with irony
but always a virtuoso master











Saul Steinberg described
carefully the wrought masks
of 20th-century civilization