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Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe presents Saul Steinberg ~ Retrospective

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Written by rubin   
Saturday, 14 March 2009 06:18

Saul Steinberg - Techniques at a Party, 1953 - Ink, colored pencil, and watercolor on paper, 14 1/2 x 23 inches © The Saul Steinberg Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS)/DACS, London

Hamburg, Germany - Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg presents Saul Steinberg - Illuminations, on view March 13th through June 1st, 2009. Saul Steinberg (1914-1999) is probably the greatest draughtsman of the 20th century; he is one of the most eminent American artists. With his unerring sense of line he created satirical drawings depicting everyday life in post-war America, including something like 1,200 drawings (over 5 decades) for the American cultural magazine The New Yorker.

Saul Steinberg An American Corrida, 1989, Colored pencil, wax crayon & graphite on paper - Collection of Jeffrey and Sivia LoriaThey made him world-famous. His breakthrough in the international art world came in 1958 with his 80-metre long wall painting The Americans for the World Exhibition in Brussels. His most celebrated work, The world as seen from 9th Avenue (1976) caricatures the world view of the inhabitants of Manhattan: On 9th Avenue people are only interested in their immediate surroundings; the rest of the world beyond shrinks to a few horizons. Whilst Steinberg is well-known to many as a draughtsman and cartoonist, few people realize what a broad range his creative oeuvre covers. This is precisely what this exhibition will point out: in addition to his most important and finest drawings, you will also be able to see sculptures, photographs, prints, paper masks, postcards and collages – many of them on display for the first time.

Born in Romania, Steinberg studied architecture in the 1930s in Milan, where he gained early fame as a cartoonist. In America after World War II, he became a propagandist, illustrator, fabric and card designer, muralist, fashion and advertising artist, stage designer and the tireless creator of image-jammed books. In the 1960s he decided to concentrate on art for gallery shows and for The New Yorker. The exhibition covers the whole range of his work, from high art to low, from murals to magazines, from caricature to cartography. To see the full scope of Steinberg's career is to get a close-up of the energy and contradictions of the 20th century. The exhibition will also will make the visitor smile a lot.

The MKG is proud to be the presenter of the first Steinberg retrospective in Germany. Hamburg is the only German venue of this overview of his work, which has also been seen in the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris, the Kunsthaus Zurich and the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London. The catalogue to the exhibition will be published by Hatje Cantz Verlag (288 pages, 310 illustrations, 175 of them in colour).

Visit Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg at : http://www.mkg-hamburg.de/mkg.php/en/

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