Art Spiegelman was born in Stockholm,
Sweden, and immigrated to the United States with his parents in his
early childhood, growing up in Queens, N.Y. He started drawing professionally
at age 16 and despite his parents wanting him to become a dentist, he
majored in art and philosophy in college. He later taught the history
and aesthetics of comics at the School for the Visual Arts in New York
and became a regular contributor to various underground publications.
Under a variety of pseudonyms like Joe Cutrate, Skeeter Grant and Al
Flooglebuckle, he drew creations such as Ace Hole, Midget Detective
and Nervous Rex. In 1975, he and Bill Griffith co-founded Arcade, an
influential comix revue with artists like Robert Crumb, S. Clay Wilson
and Justin Green. In 1980, he started the magazine Raw with his wife,
Franqoise Mouly. His graphic novels Maus: A Survivor’s Tale
and Maus II: From Mauschwitz to the Catskills were based on
the experiences of his parents as concentration camp survivors, with
the Jews presented as mice and the Germans as cats (the Katzies). They
collectively received the Pulitzer Prize in 1992. In the wake of the
disaster of September 11, 2001, Spiegelman has made a Sunday page format
story about the terrorist assault on the World Trade Center in New York,
called "In the Shadow of No Towers." The book version, published
in 2004, was a New York Times bestseller and selected as one of the
100 Notable Books of 2004.
[extracted from 2005 brochure]
