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, marking an impressive late-career resurgence. Many of these incisive, introspective, and formally adventurous illustrations were made for the artist’s forthcoming publication, Tales of Paranoia. This new comic book—Crumb’s first in twenty-three years—will be published in November of 2025 by Fantagraphics. Created in the wake of the 2022 passing of Crumb’s wife and longtime artistic partner, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, these works 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.
While Crumb’s early work skewered both mainstream and countercultural figures with a hyper-libidinal, satirical edge, his recent drawings meditate on paranoia, particularly around medicine and disease. These works convey a heightened self-awareness, oscillating between genuine suspicion and conspiracy; they incisively mirror a broader culture of mistrust of authority and the erosion of shared meaning and reliable information in the world today. In A Difficult Conundrum (2025), each panel depicts an increasingly agitated Crumb, his speech bubbles multiplying in a spiraling monologue directed against a pharmaceutical company. Through the familiar conventions of the comic form, Crumb constructs a self-portrait steeped in uncertainty and vulnerability. In other works he revisits his past, exploring difficult and disturbing moments that continue to affect him. As the title suggests, The Very Worst LSD I Ever Had (2025) documents a harrowing acid trip that Crumb experienced in 1966, which led him to seek several sessions of regressive hypnosis.
Also on view is a rare sketchbook from earlier in Crumb’s career, which offers an intimate glimpse into Crumb’s process and preoccupations. Placed in dialogue with the recent drawings, it highlights not only the evolution of the artist’s style and tone but also the enduring idiosyncrasies—formal, psychological, and narrative—that continue to define his work. Numerous recent etchings Crumb produced in collaboration with the renowned print studio Two Palms, New York, are also featured.
This is Crumb’s first exhibition in Los Angeles in over fifteen years, since The Book of Genesis Illustrated, which debuted at the Hammer Museum in 2009 and featured the original drawings for his acclaimed and best-selling graphic version of the first book of the Old Testament. The exhibition later traveled to David Zwirner New York in 2010, and in 2013, it was presented as part of the 55th Venice Biennale, curated by Massimiliano Gioni.
