Saul Steinberg (June 15, 1914 May 12, 1999) was

a Romanian-born American cartoonist and illustrator, best

known for his work for The New Yorker.
Steinberg was born in Rmnicu Srat, Romania. He
studied philosophy for a year at the University of Bucharest,
then later enrolled at the Politecnico di Milano,
studying architecture and graduating in 1940. During his
years in Milan he was actively involved in the satirical
magazine Bertoldo.
Steinberg left Italy after the introduction of anti-Semitic laws
by the Fascist government. He spent a year in the Dominican
Republic awaiting a U.S. visa; in the meantime, he submitted
his cartoons to foreign publications. In 1942, The New
Yorker magazine sponsored his entry into the United States,
and thus began Steinberg's lifelong relationship with the
publication. Through well over half a century working
with The New Yorker, Steinberg created nearly 90 covers and
more than 1,200 drawings.
During World War II, he worked for military intelligence,
stationed in China, North Africa, and Italy. After the war's
end, he returned to work for American periodicals, merging
an encyclopedic knowledge of European art with the popular
American art form of the cartoon, to pioneer a uniquely
urbane style of illustration. Although best remembered for
his commercial work, Steinberg did exhibit his work
throughout his career at fine art museums and galleries. He
married Romanian born abstract expressionist painter Hedda
Sterne in 1944. In 1946, Steinberg, along with artists such
as Arshile Gorky, Isamu Noguchi, and Robert Motherwell,
was exhibited in the critically acclaimed "Fourteen
Americans" show at The Museum of Modern Art. He has
also enjoyed a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of
American Art (1978) and another posthumous one at the
Institute for Modern Art in Valencia (IVAM), Spain (2002).

After Steinberg's death in 1999, the Saul Steinberg Foundation was established in accordance with the artist's
will. In addition to functioning as Steinberg's official estate, the Foundation is also a non-profit organization
with a mission "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."

The New Yorker cover (March 29, 1976)

View of the World from 9th Avenue, has
come to represent Manhattans telescoped
interpretation of the country beyond the
Hudson River. The cartoon showed the
supposedly limited mental geography of
Manhattanites.
The image shows Manhattan's 9th
Avenue, 10th Avenue, and the Hudson
River (appropriately labeled), while the top
half depicts the rest of the world. The rest of
the United States is drawn as a square, with
a thin brown strip along the Hudson
representing New Jersey, the names of five
cities (Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Las
Vegas, Kansas City, and Chicago) and three
states (Texas, Utah, and Nebraska) are
scattered among a few rocks for the U.S.
beyond New Jersey. The Pacific Ocean,
perhaps twice as wide again as the Hudson,
separates the U.S. from three flattened land
masses labeled China, Japan, and Russia.