CLAREMONT, CA.- The Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College announced its fall exhibition “Give Them a Riddle”: Gifts from The Saul Steinberg Foundation, on view from August 22, 2026, to January 3, 2027. While best known for his drawings in The New Yorker magazine, Steinberg is also renowned as a leading twentieth-century artist, philosopher, and cultural critic. Featuring more than 60 works across multiple media recently given to the museum by The Saul Steinberg Foundation, this exhibition traces Steinberg’s inventive artistic practice over five decades, during which he developed a distinctive, playful graphic language that he skillfully employed to satirize and critique the cultural habits and conditions of the post–World War II era.
“With profound gratitude to The Saul Steinberg Foundation, we are thrilled to present a wide range of works by Steinberg, including more familiar, iconic drawings alongside more personal portraits and table-top sculptures,” says Victoria Sancho Lobis, Sarah Rempel and Herbert S. Rempel Class of 1923 Director of the Benton. “At the Benton, we steward a robust collection of works on paper, and the gift from The Saul Steinberg Foundation adds richness and depth to our holdings in this field. Making these works available in a liberal arts setting allows us to show young people in particular what it means to lead a creative life: to approach the world with curiosity; to develop a unique and individual perspective; to express oneself with rigor, thought, and humor; and to see everything as a field of possibility. There could be no better educator on these lessons than Saul Steinberg.”
Steinberg (1914–1999) was born in Romania and began producing drawings for Italian newspapers while an architecture student at the Politecnico in Milan. In response to the rise of fascism in Italy, he fled across the Atlantic to Santo Domingo in 1941 and settled in New York a year later. By 1943, he was commissioned in the Morale Operations Division of the Office of Strategic Services, serving in China, North Africa, and Italy. He created drawings of military life in these locales, which were published in The New Yorker. This marked the beginning of a multifaceted life in which he developed his own playful yet incisive visual style as he traveled the world and freely mixed commercial work with “fine art,” drawing with design, philosophy with conceptual art. His projects were so varied that they included Christmas cards for the Museum of Modern Art and the Hallmark Company as well as the opening credits for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1955 film The Trouble with Harry at the request of the director.
Late in his career, Steinberg said, “It is one of the most important functions of art and literature and poetry: Give them a riddle. Give them a headache!” Here, the “riddles” and “headaches” are not an obstacle but rather an opportunity to engage viewers with his wry art. The exhibition opens with a presentation of his early- to mid-career works, including false writing, commercial work in wallpaper, and portraiture. Sections of the exhibition related to his late-career output include work produced during his time spent in California; drawings of architecture as a subject of both admiration and critique; and his meta-commentary on art making itself, expressed in part in a drawing table relief with Steinberg’s original sculptures of artist ephemera that mimics the lived-in space of the artist at work. In the works on display, visitors can see Steinberg’s command of many different media and processes, including a range of printmaking techniques such as etching and lithography, sculpture, and collage.
Give Them a Riddle showcases Steinberg's limitless creativity and experimentation, offering a model of an artistic life formed by engagement, humor, and observation. The Benton is grateful to The Saul Steinberg Foundation for offering this evidence of Steinberg's practice as an inspiration to students and visitors alike.
