Happy 90th, Mort Künstler! (Historical artist & MAD cartoonist)

[leno...@yahoo.com]

Well, it looks as though I slipped up, last time - some say he was born in 1931, but others say 1927. His office is in Oyster Bay, New York.

https://www.google.com/search?q=mort+kunstler+90th&oq=mort+kunstler+90th&gs_l=psy-ab.3..33i160k1.5907.10059.0.10168.18.17.0.0.0.0.199.1984.0j12.12.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..6.11.1784...0j0i67k1.dPZVCj_m6gg
(a few birthday tributes)

From Amazon:

...A resident of Oyster Bay, NY, Mort Künstler studied art at Brooklyn College, UCLA and Pratt Institute. He became a highly successful illustrator, working on assignments for Newsweek, Saturday Evening Post, Mad Magazine and Boy's Life. Accuracy became firmly imbued into Künstler’s art beginning with assignments of historical topics from National Geographic; these assignments also taught him the value of working with noted historians. A commission from CBS-TV to do the paintings for the mini-series, The Blue and The Gray, was the beginning of the artist’s close association with the Civil War. The High Water Mark, a painting executed for that series, is considered a highly accurate and moving depiction of the battle at Gettysburg. It was unveiled at Gettysburg National Military Park Museum in 1988 in celebration of the 125th anniversary of the battle...

http://mortkunstler.com/

http://mortkunstler.com/biography.asp

http://www.kunstlerillustrations.com/html/movies.asp
(movie posters he's done)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mort_K%C3%BCnstler

At MAD, his pen name was "Mutz."

http://comics.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=822&lotNo=45400
(first MAD cover he did)

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-X-8MDRSCun4/VMt8DO4jDHI/AAAAAAAAZz4/cx5_X4PEfs4/s1600/Kunstler_Mort_Jaws_Mad.jpg
(1976 cover with a parody of a well-known movie. "...He wasn't sure if it would alienate his fans, so he signed it "Mutz," just one of his pseudonyms.")

https://www.google.com/search?biw=1266&bih=810&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=mort+kunstler+jaws&oq=mort+kunstler+jaws&gs_l=psy-ab.3...4792.5314.0.5970.4.4.0.0.0.0.184.534.0j3.3.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..1.1.181...0i24k1.QnfCnMCB_iI#imgrc=_
(more artwork)

I remember him mainly for his illustrations for the softcover edition of "Two on an Island" (1965), by Bianca Bradbury, about two preteens stranded on an island off of Connecticut. I also remember his sensitive pencil illustrations for Robert Froman's "The Wild Orphan" (1972), about a lonely Idaho boy who raises a cougar cub without his parents' knowledge.

Nowadays, it seems, he's known mainly for his Civil War paintings and
books.

http://www.nvdaily.com/news/local-news/2015/05/museum-to-feature-work-of-mort-kunstler/
(article from 2015)

Excerpts:

...His first illustration for “Mad” was a back cover for the women’s liberation movement, depicting the Statue of Liberty holding a tablet that read “women’s lib” and, instead of a torch, a bra.

“Well, they loved that,” Kunstler said. Next, he scored a front cover for “Mad,” a take on the movie poster for “Jaws,” showing “Mad” mascot Alfred E. Neuman, swimming above a shark that commented, “Yecch!”

“I was asked to do every ‘Mad’ cover after that,” Kunstler recalled. Only he declined, because the magazine refused to return his original illustrations to him. “It’s too bad, because I would have had a lot of fun doing it,” he said...


https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/nyregion/the-many-periods-of-mort-knstlers-life.html
(2016 article on his paintings)



Other books he's illustrated are "Bad Boy" (1953) by Jim Thompson, Alfred Ollivant's "Bob, Son of Battle" (1960), "The School Train" (1965) by Helen Acker, "Mystery of the Silent Friends" (1966) by Robin Gottlieb & Al Brule (cover), "Page Boy of Camelot" (1967) aka "Page Boy for King Arthur," by Eugenia Stone, "Star of Danger" [1969, teen pulp fiction, Based on a True story - about the WWII Danish resistance] by Jane Whitbread Levin, "Jock's Island" (1969) by Elizabeth Coatsworth, "The Lady With the Lamp" (1970) by Lee Wyndham, "Mystery of the Secret Stowaway" (1970) by Joan Lowery Nixon, Ernest Thomson Seton's "King of the Grizzlies" (1970), and "Treasures Beneath the Sea" (1971) by Robert Silverberg.

Plus "The Red Badge of Courage."

https://www.google.com/search?q=mort+kunstler+books&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjl8fba8_rVAhUJRiYKHYx-BvQQ_AUICygC&biw=1266&bih=810
(book covers, mostly for adults)


http://www.flickr.com/photos/jl-incrowd/2491522812/
(Cover of "Mystery of the Silent Friends" (1966) by Robin Gottlieb, inside illustrations by Al Brule)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/0590091921/ref=dp_otherviews_z_0?ie=UTF8&s=books&img=0
("Mystery of the Secret Stowaway" (1970) by Joan Lowery Nixon)

http://openlibrary.org/works/OL15144436W/The_lady_with_the_lamp
("The Lady With the Lamp" (1970) by Lee Wyndham)

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41CLVDVp-AL.jpg
(cover of "Two on an Island")

http://www.librarything.com/work/101125
(cover of "The Wild Orphan")

https://i.pinimg.com/236x/de/41/dc/de41dc2e2d23f7abccecd732b40f8771.jpg
(cover of "Mystery of the Witches' Bridge" by Barbee Oliver Carleton)

https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=12092968840&searchurl=kn%3Dmort%2Bkunstler%2Bscholastic%26sortby%3D7
(cover of "Old One-Toe")

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22mort+kunstler%22&tbo=p&tbm=vid&source=vgc&hl=en&aq=f
(quite a few videos)


Lenona.