Saul Steinberg lookin’ PIMP! with his girlfriend, Ada Ongari, Milan, c. 1937-40.
From “Saul Steinberg’s Italian Years”:
Steinberg’s artistic persona began to take shape in Milan, where he arrived from his native Romania in 1933 to study architecture. In 1936, he began contributing cartoons to Italian humor newspapers and soon became renowned for his visual wit. But, in 1938, with the institution of racial laws, he couldn’t believe “the betrayal,” as he put it. “Dearest Italy turned into Romania, hellish homeland,” he wrote in a 1995 letter to Aldo Buzzi. He then went through a bureaucratic ordeal to obtain the many papers needed to leave Italy. Following an aborted attempt to take the Portugal route, he was briefly interned, before managing to finally flee the country. He embarked for New York in 1941. The surreal documents contained in his masterpiece The Passport gain new poignancy in light of his struggle through the Fascist bureaucratic machine.
The Passport is incredible. One of my treasured books.
betzistar
