SAUL STEINBERG
LANDSCAPES

September 10 - October 17, 2009

indent Adam Baumgold gallery presents an exhibition of Saul Steinberg "Landscapes" from September 10 through October 17, 2009. The exhibition will feature watercolors and drawings from the 60's and 70's of Steinberg's "postcard" landscapes, as he called them - watercolors of vast horizons and skylines accented with artist made tiny rubber stamped figures, dwarfed by the environment, amidst fake seals and documents within these naturalistic scenes. The multiple views in many of these "postcard" landscapes "refer to the vast unexploited space Steinberg first saw in the new world - an exotic sight for someone arriving from the over settled old one. Some of the postcard plains allude, by title, to his wider travels; "Ten Japan Sunsets," 1971, and "Mombasa," 1969. His skies often bear the stamp of an inspector who - himself a rubber stamp - appraises the vacant wilderness, alone or in surveying teams...1" These solitary, small figures exude a sense of nostalgia and evoke a feeling of an immigrant's arrival in a new land and a search for self identity within a new environment.

indent Another important feature of the exhibition will focus on how Steinberg used landscape in his drawings in other conceptual ways. In the drawing "I Do, I Have, I Am," 1971, the words are placed within the ground and sky that serve as pawns to impart the message "To Do is exciting but emphemeral; to Have is but a form of poverty; the only bedrock is Being (I Am) - character.2" Also included in the exhibition are Untitled, 1967, and "Utopia III," 1967 - landscape drawings where Steinberg's fake artists stamps and seals replace real representations of people and terrain - landscapes become real through Steinberg's masterful obfuscation with unnaturalistic artificial elements. "Egypt," 1971, shows Steinberg's alter ego - the cat - among the pyramids and tiny people that all fit neatly within the lines of the sheet music paper that is used in a dazzling display of scale and perspective. The drawing, "All Roads Lead to Rome," 1962, that was reproduced in The New Yorker, is a concept and comic conceit in which time travelers are shuttled on a geometric, surrealistic map route starting in Kansas City and ending in Rome - a definite precursor to Steinberg's famous work "A View of the World from 9th Avenue," 1975.

indent Saul Steinberg (1914-1999) was one of the 20th century's most enigmatic and inventive artists. Worldwide retrospectives of his work originated at The Whitney Museum of American Art in 1978, and The Morgan Library and Museum in New York in 2006.

indent The gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday 11:00-5:30 P.M. For additional information, please contact Adam Baumgold at (212)861-7338 or at abaumgold@aol.com.

1. Joel Smith, "Saul Steinberg Illuminations" (Retrospective catalog), p. 190.
2. Joel Smith, "Saul Steinberg Illuminations" (Retrospective catalog), p. 188.