Art Spiegelman

Who is Art Spiegelman?

Art Spiegelman is an American cartoonist, editor and comics advocate based in New York City, best known for his graphic novel Maus. His work as coeditor 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 1960s. 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 turned focus on a "very long comic book" about his father's experiences as a Holocaust survivor. The book, Maus, depicts Nazis as cats, Jews as mice, and ethnic Poles as pigs, and took thirteen years to complete. It won a special Pulitzer Prize in 1992 and 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.