Saul Steinberg
Saul Steinberg (June 15, 1914, Rm. Sărat, Romania – May 12, 1999, New York City) was a Romanian-born American artist, best known for his work for The New Yorker, most notably View of the World from 9th Avenue. He described himself as "a writer who draws".
Also recorded as Saul Erik Steinberg
Saul Steinberg

Saul Steinberg Foundation · Public domain
- Name
- Saul Steinberg
- Birth Name
- Saul Erik Steinberg
- Born
- 15 June 1914
- Birthplace
- Râmnicu Sărat, Kingdom of Romania
- Died
- 12 May 1999
- Place of death
- New York City, U.S.
- Education
- * Polytechnic University of Milan
- Known for
- The New Yorker
- Nationality
- Romania · United States
- Occupation
- comics artist · painter · illustrator · architect · designer · photographer
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Documentary summary
Saul Steinberg (June 15, 1914, Rm. Sărat, Romania – May 12, 1999, New York City) was a Romanian-born American artist, best known for his work for The New Yorker, most notably View of the World from 9th Avenue. He described himself as "a writer who draws".
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Note VALÉORINE
Saul Steinberg (1914–1999) was an architect, caricaturist and comics artist, among other activities, of Romanian and American nationality. The architect was born in Râmnicu Sărat and died in Manhattan.
Saul Steinberg was educated at Polytechnic University of Milan and University of Bucharest. The architect worked for The New Yorker and was a member of American Academy of Arts and Letters, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts.
Among the works is View of the World from 9th Avenue. Languages used include English, Italian and Romanian. Honours include Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.
Composed from admitted, traceable facts · 26 September 2026
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In this article
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Saul Steinberg • Birth Name — Saul Erik Steinberg • Born — 15 June 1914 • Birthplace — Râmnicu Sărat, Kingdom of Romania • Died — 12 May 1999 • Place of death — New York City, U.S. • Education — * Polytechnic University of Milan • University of Bucharest • Known for — The New Yorker • Style — Conceptual art
Biography
Biography
Steinberg was born in Râmnicu Sărat, Buzău County, Romania to a family of Russian Jewish descent. In 1932, he entered the University of Bucharest. In 1933, he enrolled at the Polytechnic University of Milan to study architecture; he received his degree in 1940. In 1936, he began contributing cartoons to the humor newspaper Bertoldo. Two years later, the antisemitic racial laws promulgated by the fascist government forced him to start seeking refuge in another country. In 1941, he fled to the Dominican Republic, where he spent a year awaiting a US visa. By then, his drawings had appeared in several US periodicals; his first contribution to The New Yorker was published in October 1941. Steinberg arrived in New York City in July 1942; within a few months he received a commission in the US Naval Reserve and was then seconded to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). He worked for the Morale Operations division in China, North Africa, and Italy. Shipped back to Washington in 1944, he married the Romanian-born painter Hedda Sterne. After World War II, Steinberg continued to publish drawings in The New Yorker and other periodicals, including Fortune, Vogue, Mademoiselle, and Harper's Bazaar. At the same time, he embarked on an exhibition career in galleries and museums. In 1946, he was included in the critically acclaimed "Fourteen Americans" show at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, exhibiting along with Arshile Gorky, Isamu Noguchi, and Robert Motherwell, among others. Steinberg had more than 80 one-artist shows in galleries and museums in the US, Europe, and South America. He was affiliated with the Betty Parsons and Sidney Janis galleries in New York and the Galerie Maeght in Paris. A dozen museums and institutions have in-depth collections of his work, and examples are included in the holdings of more than eighty other public collections. • Illustration — The Labyrinth by Saul Steinberg (1960) He and Sterne separated in 1960, but remained close friends. However, toward the end of Sterne's life, she called their marriage license “the first of Saul’s phony documents, maybe.” Steinberg's long, multifaceted career encompassed works in many media and appeared in different contexts. In addition to magazine publications and gallery art, he produced advertising art, photoworks, textiles, stage sets, and murals. Given this many-leveled output, his work is difficult to position within the canons of postwar art history. He himself defined the problem: "I don't quite belong to the art, cartoon or magazine world, so the art world doesn't quite know where to place me." He is best described as a "modernist without portfolio, constantly crossing boundaries into uncharted visual territory. In subject matter and styles, he made no distinction between high and low art, which he freely conflated in an oeuvre that is stylistically diverse yet consistent in depth and visual imagination." After Steinberg's death on May 12, 1999, The Saul Steinberg Foundation was established in accordance with the artist's will. The Foundation's mission is "to facilitate the study and appreciation of Saul Steinberg's contribution to 20th-century art" and to "serve as a resource for the international curatorial-scholarly community as well as the general public".
Identity and overview
Identity and overview
The following is established of the heading itself. Institutional cataloguing adds that saul Steinberg is recorded as Romania and United States.
Works and production
Works and production
The following works and productions are recorded by name or by count. Institutional cataloguing adds that legs.

The Labyrinth by Saul Steinberg (1960)
Tim-desser

Steinberg with his parents, sister, and brother-in-law, Bucharest, 1944. Saul Steinberg Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
Saul Steinberg Foundation
Primary material
Documents and archives
Institutional database
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q432856: Saul Steinberg
Scholarly · Wikimedia Foundation
authority file
- Gemeinsame Normdatei 1033139173, Ausstellung Saul Steinberg: The Americans (2013 : Köln).
General reference · Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
reference work
- “Saul Steinberg”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Plimmer, Martin. Obituary: Saul Steinberg. The Independent. 18 May 1999.
- 2.Boxer, Sarah. Saul Steinberg, Epic Doodler, Dies at 84. The New York Times. 1999-05-13. 0362-4331.
- 3.Nicholas Garland. Saul Steinberg: Illuminations at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. The Telegraph. 2 December 2008.
- 4.Artist Info. www.nga.gov.
- 5.Saul Steinberg, archived from the National Gallery of Art
- 6.Joel Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations (Yale, 2006), pp. 24-29
- 7.Mario Tedeschini Lalli, "Descent from Paradise: Saul Steinberg's Italian Years, 1933-1941," Published in Quest: Issues in Contemporary Jewish History, no. 2, October 2011. http://www.quest-cdecjournal.it/focus.php?id=221/
- 8.Early Years: Bucharest & Milan. Saul Steinberg Foundation.
- 9.1914. Saul Steinberg Foundation.
- 10.Smith, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, pp. 31-32
- 11.World War II. Saul Steinberg Foundation.
- 12.Selected Exhibitions. Saul Steinberg Foundation.
- 13.1960s Introduction. Saul Steinberg Foundation.
- 14.Boxer, Sarah. The Last Irascible Sarah Boxer. 0028-7504.
- 15.Boxer, Sarah. Sarah Boxer on Deirdre Bair's Saul Steinberg. www.artforum.com. January 2013.
- 16.Introduction. Saul Steinberg Foundation.
Bibliography printed in the source article · 11
- The Saul Steinberg Foundation website, “Selected Bibliography."
- Joel Smith, with an introduction by Ian Frazier, Steinberg at The New Yorker. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2005.
- Iain Topliss, The Comic Worlds of Peter Arno, William Steig, Charles Addams, and Saul Steinberg. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005.
- Joel Smith, with an introduction by Charles Simic, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006.
- Saul Steinberg: L'Écriture visuelle. Strasbourg: Musée Tomi Ungerer, 2009.
- ’’Saul Steinberg: cartoons’’ New York, Penguin Books, 1947
- Mario Tedeschini Lalli, "Descent from Paradise: Saul Steinberg's Italian Years, 1933-1941." Published in Issues in Contemporary Jewish History, no. 2, October 2011.
- Bair, Deidre. Saul Steinberg: A Biography. Nan A. Talese/Doubleday (2012)
- Corrections to Deirdre Bair, Saul Steinberg: A Biography
- Melissa Renn, Andreas Prinzing, Iain Topliss, et al., Saul Steinberg: The Americans. Cologne: Museum Ludwig, 2013
- Will Norman, Transatlantic Aliens: Modernism, Exile, and Culture in Midcentury America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016. Chapter 5, "Saul Steinberg's Vanishing Trick."
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
Institutional database
Wikidata, structured authority record Q432856: Saul SteinbergWikimedia Foundation
Institutional witnessauthority file
Gemeinsame Normdatei 1033139173, Ausstellung Saul Steinberg: The Americans (2013 : Köln).Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Secondary witnessreference work
Secondary witness
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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