David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of new drawings and prints by iconic illustrator and cartoonist R. Crumb (b. 1943), on view at the gallery’s 616 N Western Avenue location in Los Angeles. In his works of the last several years Crumb reflects on life in his eighties and his sixty-year career as well as themes of personal and mass paranoia during these times of social and political unrest. Crumb’s most mordant attacks are, as always, reserved for himself and show him contending with his own manic anxieties in a humorous and insightful manner.

The new works in this exhibition represent Crumb’s first extensive solo comic work in over two decades. These incisive, introspective, and formally adventurous illustrations—many of which were done for a new zine—mark an impressive late-career resurgence. Created in the wake of the 2022 passing of Crumb’s wife and longtime artistic partner, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, they reveal a mind turning inward without its usual counterpoint—absent her grounding presence, the work veers further into obsessive, unfiltered reflection. As Crumb noted in 2019, “Success and the love of real women helped me a lot. Aline really saved my dismal ass.”1 Crumb and Kominsky-Crumb had frequently collaborated, particularly in the decade preceding her death, and her absence is felt directly in the content of these recent works.