Hotel Room in Carpi, 1951

Saul Steinberg
ink, crayon and colored pencil on Strathmore
Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense
Gift of The Saul Steinberg Foundation

 
The drawing Hotel Room in Carpi emerged from a trip that Steinberg took in1951; he produced the final version that same year. Ma Much like in the drawing of his bedroom interior at the Bar del Grillo, here too Steinberg draws the interior of the room with a Van Goghesque perspective. The drawing and the sketches from which the drawing is derived—the latter in sketchbooks now in Yale’s Beinecke Library—offer an interesting and rare insight into how Steinberg drew “from life.” Such travel sketchbooks—common through the 1960s but increasingly rare thereafter—are where the lessons learned at the Politecnico are at their most visible, along with a more general passion for architectural drawing, perhaps inspired by Le Corbusier’s travel carnets. The details of what was around him—landscapes, plazas, fragments of streets, details of furniture, intimations of colors, notes on expenses—rarely transformed into finished drawings. But the trip to Carpi and perhaps the enchantment of place, was so imprinted in Steinberg’s memory that when he returned home, he took a large drawing sheet and recomposed all the details. He even added the listing of the hotel’s rates on the back of the room door—a detail only Steinberg would include.