To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > People May 13, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/people/obit/1999/05/13/steinberg Saul Steinberg The New Yorker's renowned "writer of pictures" dies in Manhattan. - - - - - - - - - - - - Saul Steinberg, who drew cartoons for the New Yorker magazine for more than 50 years, died Wednesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 84. His brooding doodles were considered fine art and drew comparisons to legendary painters such as Picasso and Duchamp. Art critic Harold Rosenberg described Mr. Steinberg as "a writer of pictures, an architect of speech and sounds, a draftsman of political reflections." Among Mr. Steinberg's most famous cartoons is "View of the World from 9th Avenue (1975)," which first appeared on the magazine's cover the following year. The drawing shows a bird's-eye view of the world looking west from Manhattan, with the great detail of New York streets fading into ill-defined clumps for the rest of the nation and the world. This perspective -- as seen in the cartoon from the standpoint of a chauvinistic Manhattanite -- spawned similar drawings for numerous cities, including London, Paris, Rome and Venice. Born in Romania in 1914, Mr. Steinberg studied at the University of Bucharest before moving to Italy, where he received a doctoral degree in architecture in 1940. But Mr. Steinberg had begun drawing in 1934, quickly discovering his skill as a cartoonist. The New Yorker published its first Steinberg cartoon in 1941, a sketch of a reverse centaur. Mr. Steinberg arrived in the United States a year later. Mr. Steinberg is survived by Hedda Lindenberg Sterne, whom he married in 1943. They were separated in the 1970s but never divorced. salon.com | May 13, 1999