BIOGRAPHY
Deirdre Bair
Also known as: Bair Deirdre
American literary scholar and biographer who won a National Book Award for her biography of Samuel Beckett in 1981
HER EARLIEST MEMORIES were so closely linked to the color black that, throughout her life, whenever something of her childhood came to mind unbidden she often had the sensation of being smothered in blackness.
— from Simone de Beauvoir
Most acclaimed
Saul Steinberg
Saul Steinberg's The Americans, a colossal mural-collage over seventy meters long made for the U.S. pavilion at the 1958 Brussel's World's Fair, is being exhibited by the Museum Ludwig in its complete state for the first time since the Fair closed. The exhibition will also include a selection of related drawings from the 1950s and magazine features by the artist who always crossed the boundaries between high and low art. Romanian-born Steinberg (1914-1999) studied architecture in Milan before emigrating to America in 1942. He settled in New York and achieved prominence for his drawings for The New Yorker and other magazines, as well as his art for galleries and museums (long before his famous View of the World from 9th Avenue from 1976). For the U.S. pavilion at Expo 58 -- the first world's fair to be mounted after World War II, which was shaped by the Cold War rivalry between the U.S. and Soviet pavilion -- Steinberg created a monumental mural-collage consisting of eight panels with a total length of over seventy meters. They present a panorama of everyday life in America, ranging from the hustle and bustle of the big city to the apparently idyllic world of rural communities. An array of collaged human figures dominates the foregrounds, sometimes singly, sometimes densely packed, often against a background of enlarged photographs of drawings. The figures testify to Steinberg's assimilation of a wide range of artistic influences and to his creative engagement with a variety of media and materials, including drawing, photography, wallpaper, packing paper, and comics. His view of the American way of life, though affectionately humorous, does not exclude its darker aspects. He looks at the United States with the fresh eyes of an immigrant, observing and registering phenomena like the postwar automobile culture and urban development, but also the culture of corporate conformity and a sociological sense of alienation.
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, nor was she considered one at the time of her death, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory. Beauvoir wrote novels, essays, short stories, biographies, autobiographies, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues. She was best known for her "trailblazing work in feminist philosophy", The Second Sex (1949), a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism. She was also known for her novels, the most famous of which were She Came to Stay (1943) and The Mandarins (1954).
Samuel Beckett
1978
Samuel Barclay Beckett ( ; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish playwright, novelist, and poet. Written in both English and French, his literary and theatrical works feature bleak, impersonal, and tragicomic episodes of life, coupled with black comedy and literary nonsense. Beckett is widely regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century, credited with transforming modern theatre. As a major figure of Irish literature, he is best known for his tragicomedy play Waiting for Godot (1953). For his foundational contribution to both literature and theatre, Beckett received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation." During his early career, Beckett worked as a literary critic and commentator, and in 1930 he took up a role as a lecturer in Dublin.