American Calligraphy #6: The Inner Life of Letters

ABCs of the USA: The stories behind America's most distinctive calligraphy styles.  

These letters were inspired  

by many Steinberg cartoons.   

As a new immigrant from Romania in 1942, Saul Steinberg (1914 - 1999) said he learned to see words as part of the cityscape before he learned to read them, categorizing himself as "a writer who draws.” His imagination lived at the crossroads where letters challenge ideas. His unique drawings are full of words that comment on—and sometimes slyly contradict—themselves. 

You'll never look at letters quite the same way once Steinberg shows you their secret lives. 

Ink, pencil, and collage on paper, 14 ½ x 23 in. The Morgan Library & Museum, New York. Originally published in The New Yorker, October 27, 1986. © The Saul Steinberg Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Used with permission.