Born in 1914, Saul Steinberg grew up in a Jewish family in Bucharest, Romania, and in 1932 traveled to Milan’s Polytechnic University to study architecture. In 1941, he left. Fascist Italy wanted him out or dead. He spent a year in the Dominican Republic, awaiting U.S. citizenship.
During this time of displacement, The New Yorker published Steinberg’s first drawing. It shows an art student explaining to her teacher that she has indeed painted a centaur—we see that the halves have been reversed and it’s the hind legs that are human. The cartoon got him a contract. Living in a small apartment in Manhattan, Steinberg began to see his work travel far—into Harper’s Bazaar, The New Yorker, and Vogue.
