Textile, The Wedding

The Wedding, by Saul Steinberg, depicts a whimsical cartoon of a wedding scene with the bride and groom featured at the center surrounded by family members and children posed in the foreground. The characters are screen printed in black and multicolor on a light blue silk, plain weave ground. This textile was manufactured Piazza Prints, an independent screen printer in New York (established 1946) that produced many of Steinberg’s designs as wallcoverings, textiles, and scarves.
Romanian-born Steinberg studied architecture in Milan beginning in 1933, but soon after began publishing cartoons. By the time he graduated in 1940, his drawings were appearing in Life and Harper’s Bazaar. In 1941, anti-Jewish laws in fascist Italy forced Steinberg to immigrate to the United States. He began publishing regularly in The New Yorker, a relationship that lasted almost 60 years and produced 90 covers and over 1,000 drawings and cartoons. Steinberg was an Artist in Residence at the Smithsonian in 1967 and is well-represented in the Smithsonian collections.
The museum has examples of Steinberg’s works on paper, wallcoverings, and textiles. We have The Wedding as a wallcovering and this proposed acquisition would provide its representation as a textile.

Textile, The Wedding; Printed by Piazza Prints Inc. (United States); silk; Warp x Weft: 916.9 x 93.3 cm (30 ft. 1 in. x 36 3/4 in.); Gift of Robert A. and Lynne C. Adams; 2007-28-1