The Spoleto Festival in Italy, strictly the Festival dei Due Mondi (Festival of Two Worlds). was founded in 1958 and its organizers soon began to commission major artists to design posters promoting the annual event. In 1965 the official poster was designed by Ben Shahn, for example, and in 1968, Robert Motherwell was hired for the job. Romanian-born American artist Saul Steinberg, perhaps best known for the countless covers and cartoons he designed for the New Yorker over six decades, created this poster for the festival in 1969, based on a surreal, partial figure cut from kraft paper and apparently doffing her nose. The original design for this poster was donated to the Morgan Library and Museum in New York by the Saul Steinberg Foundation.
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