Online Exhibition

R. Crumb: The Sketchbook Prints

Interested in artworks?

R. Crumb, Self Portrait (Just My Normal Day), 2023 (detail)

This selection features new etchings by R. Crumb, created in collaboration with the acclaimed print studio Two Palms in New York, and presented as part of the artist’s exhibition R. Crumb: Tales of Paranoia at David Zwirner Los Angeles.  The prints bring the artist’s previously unseen personal musings into wider view. Until now, the images have existed only within the bounds of Crumb’s sketchbooks from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. 

Installation view, R. Crumb: Tales of Paranoia, David Zwirner, Los Angeles, 2025

Created over the course of two years from 2023 to 2025, these prints register the unmistakable linework and graphic voice of Crumb’s drawings. Each is based on pen-and-ink imagery from the artist’s prolific sketchbooks, which, since the 1960s, have served as both the laboratory of his imagination and the diaries of his most personal reflections.

Their contents offer a mordant satirical critique, directly addressing political disillusionment, racial and gender stereotypes, sexual fantasies and fetishes, and the absurdities of social convention—themes Crumb often explores through disturbing but hilariously abject self-caricature.

Courtesy of Two Palms

R. Crumb’s sketchbooks, spanning May 1990 through January 1998

“Whenever I paged through his sketchbook, I was always knocked out by the scope of his art.”

—Terry Zwigoff, film director

Interior view of R. Crumb’s sketchbook, 1993–1994

Interior view of R. Crumb’s sketchbook, 1985–1986

Interior view of R. Crumb’s sketchbook, 1990

Interior view of R. Crumb’s sketchbook, 1998–1999

 

Installation view, R. Crumb: Tales of Paranoia, David Zwirner, Los Angeles, 2025

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