Charles Steffen left art school in 1950 after one semester due to the onset of schizophrenia and moved back into his family’s home, where he drew every day for the rest of his life. He transformed the subjects of the nudes and portraits he favored into anatomically impossible creatures with contour-mapped surfaces and intense but inward-focused gazes. In most compositions, he incorporated text that was diaristic yet expository. Self-Portrait with Pipe, which he playfully described as a study of pipe mechanics, shows Steffen’s characteristically tough, linear style, marked by insistent striations of varying thickness, rhythmic repetition, variation of line and form, and his distinctive reptilian treatment of skin.