Auto advertising artist Art Fitzpatrick dies at 96

Art Fitzpatrick, the renowned auto illustrator who formed half of the duo that cranked out some of the most recognizable and effective automotive advertisements of the Sixties and beyond, has died at the age of 96.

Fitzpatrick, born in 1919, had perhaps every advantage one could have to make a successful career out of illustration. He came from an art-centric family – his father painted backgrounds for Disney and his grandfather worked as an architectural artist, as he told Mark McCourt for an article in Hemmings Classic Car – and claims he lied about his age to get early admission into Detroit’s Society of Arts and Crafts and the Detroit School of Art, putting himself through school by cutting blueprints on the night shift in Chrysler’s engineering department.

John Tjaarda hired Fitzpatrick away from Chrysler to apprentice at Briggs Body Company but about a year later Howard “Dutch” Darrin lured Fitzpatrick to California, where the latter penned designs for Darrin-modified Packards. According to a bio on his website, Fitzpatrick served in the Naval Aviation Training and the Naval Office of Research and Invention during World War II, then landed a contract to illustrate Mercury’s postwar ads before he even left the Navy. That lasted until 1953, when Buick hired him and his new partner, Van Kaufman, as the division’s ad artists, and the duo – Fitzpatrick illustrating the cars, Kaufman painting the backgrounds – would then switch to Pontiac in 1959.

During their Pontiac years Fitzpatrick and Kaufman brought perhaps the greatest amount of experimentation to their illustrations. Fitzpatrick, who shot hundreds of photos of the cars they were to illustrate, started tracing the photos and then cutting the tracings apart and putting them back together in lower, longer, and wider configurations that he would then impart to the final illustrations. He also started to crop parts of the car out of the frame, giving the impression of larger-than-life size.

The duo’s time with Pontiac came to an end in the early 1970s – they would continue for another few years illustrating Opels in much the same way – and the 285 illustrations the pair did for Pontiac have become particular favorites of auto art aficionados and Pontiac enthusiasts alike. But Fitzpatrick didn’t quit there. He continued to produce signed and numbered prints of his work for decades after, eventually adapting to digital illustration techniques, and he produced a series of automobile illustrations for the United States Postal Service, starting with its “Cars of the 1950s” set.

More recently, Fitzpatrick lent his name to an Automotive Fine Arts Society Pebble Beach award that annually recognizes work that demonstrates dynamic creativity. Earlier this year, he donated several dozen original pieces of artwork to the Gilmore Car Museum, where they remain on display in a dedicated gallery.

No funeral arrangements have been publicly announced.

 

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