Born in Romania, Saul Steinberg lived most of his life in New York, becoming a well known 20th-century comic illustrator and philosopher, who used a variety of mediums including collage and mural painting. He is perhaps most famous for his poster of the New Yorker whose shortsighted view of the world causes the cityscape of Manhattan to be the landmark from which everything else recedes.

He studied at the University of Bucharest and the Reggio Politecnico in Milan, earning a doctoral degree in architecture in 1940, but he never designed a single building. He had drawings featured regularly in Italian weeklies, and they like the ones he later did in the United States were popular for their doodling, rococo style and tongue in cheek co...