Adam Baumgold Fine Art presents the exhibition, Bruce McCall: Visions of the Retrofuture, from 15th October until 7th November 2025, to be held at DFN Projects in New York.
Bruce McCall (1935–2023) was a visionary artist and writer whose meticulously executed drawings and paintings appeared on more than 80 covers of The New Yorker magazine.
This major exhibition of over 60 works from the estate of the artist will include many original New Yorker cover paintings, as well as several works from the original National Lampoon, Vanity Fair and others, and drawings from his books Zany Afternoons, The Last Dream-O-Rama (The Cars Detroit Forgot to Build 1950–1960), All Meat Looks Like South America, Marveltown, and This Land was Made for You and Me (But Mostly Me), with David Letterman.
Visitors can also view notes and sketches from McCall’s archive, related to some of the paintings on display, offering a rare glimpse into his creative process. This will be the first solo McCall exhibition since Bruce McCall’s New York at The New York Historical in 2021, and the first posthumous appreciation of his career since his death in 2023.
“With his deadpan surrealism, superior wit, and perfect timing, the satirical artist and writer left an indelible mark on everything he touched, from National Lampoon to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair,” noted Bruce Handy in his remembrance of Bruce McCall in Graydon Carter’s Air Mail also noting that McCall’s artworks “[were] executed with painstaking detail in gouache on paper or board; he took familiar objects, places and spaces and twisted them askew, playing with scale, perspective, and elementary physics but rendering the results with a deadpan realism that made the fantastic look matter-of-fact. You could call him a funnier Magritte.”
Speaking in his TED Talk in 2008 McCall said, “My work is so personal and so strange that I have to invent my own lexicon for it – Retrofuturism – looking back to see how yesterday viewed tomorrow.” And, he added “They are always wrong, often hilariously, optimistically wrong.”
• Bruce McCall: Visions of the Retrofuture 15th October – 7th November 2025, DFN Projects, Fuller Building, 41 East 57th St., (Suite #1103), New York, NY 10022
The opening reception is on Wednesday 15th October from 5–7.00pm. Hours are Monday – Friday, 11–4.00pm
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
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