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Born on this day
Galileo Galilei
7th week in year
15 February 2024

Important personalitiesBack

Art Spiegelman15.2.1948

Wikipedia (26 Feb 2013)

Art Spiegelman (born Itzhak Avraham ben Zev on15 February 1948 in Stockholm, Sweden) is a New-York-based American cartoonist, editor and comics advocate, best known for his graphic novel Maus (1986, 1991). His work as co-editor on the comics magazines Arcade and Raw has been influential, and he spent a decade as contributing artist for The New Yorker starting in 1992, where he made several high-profile and sometimes controversial covers. He is married to artist, designer and editor Françoise Mouly.

Spiegelman's work first gained prominence in the underground comix scene in the 1970s. This work was short and experimental, and often included autobiographical elements. A selection of these strips appeared in the collection Breakdowns in 1977. After Breakdowns, Spiegelman decided to work on a "very long comic book" about his father's experiences as a Holocaust survivor. The book, Maus, took thirteen years to complete. It depicts Nazis as cats, Jews as mice, and ethnic Poles as pigs. The book won a Pulitzer. It has come to be viewed as a pivotal work in comics, responsible for bringing serious scholarly attention to the medium.

Spiegelman and Mouly edited eleven issues of Raw from 1980 to 1991. The oversized comics and graphics magazine helped introduce talents who became prominent in alternative comics, such as Charles Burns, Chris Ware, Ben Katchor, and others. It also introduced several foreign cartoonists to the English-speaking comics world. Beginning in the 1990s, the couple worked for The New Yorker, which Spiegelman left to work on In the Shadow of No Towers (2004), about his reaction to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York.

Spiegelman is an advocate for greater comics literacy. As editor and as a teacher at the School of Visual Arts in New York, Spiegelman has promoted greater understanding of comics, and mentored younger cartoonists.

   
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