LONDON.- From The New Yorker to cartography, from greeting cards to gallery art, the comic genius of modernism unmasks the 20th century.

Saul Steinberg (1914 - 1999), an American artist whose magic lit up the pages and covers of The New Yorker for six decades, is the subject of Dulwich Picture Gallery's latest winter exhibition. It's a retrospective which features more than a hundred drawings, collages and sculptural assemblages by the artist whom many regard as not only a comic genius but among the greatest draftsmen of the modern era. This exhibition is the first full scale review of his career.

Born in Romania, Steinberg studied architecture in the 1930s in Milan, where he gained early fame as a cartoonist. In America after World War II, he became a propagandist, illustrator, fabric and card designer, muralist, fashion and advertising artist, stage designer and the tireless creator of image-jammed books. In the 1960s he decided to concentrate on art for gallery shows and for The New Yorker. The exhibition covers the whole range of his work, from high art to low, from murals to magazines, from caricature to cartography. To see the full scope of Steinberg's career is to get a close-up of the energy and contradictions of the 20th century. The exhibition will also will make the visitor smile a lot.