D R E W • F R I E D M A N

Friday, March 15, 2013

The Caricature Art of Robert Grossman

Illustrator, sculptor, comics artist, animator Robert Grossman has had an astounding career spanning the last 60 years. To say he's the greatest airbrush artist/caricaturist of all time isn't hyperbole, it's an understatement. Picking just a few samples from his incredible body of work is a near impossible task (he's created over 500 magazine covers alone!), but I'm presenting some of my favorites. If anyone deserves to have a career retrospective/anthology it's Bob Grossman. Check out these beautifully rendered, consistently brilliant and memorable illustrations, most chosen from the 60's-80's. As Steven Heller wrote: "his mordant wit is never duplicated".

Bob has continued turning out wonderful drawings and comic strips regularly for, among others, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic and the NY Observer where I was been proud to have alternated with him, Victor Juhasz and Philip Burke as a regular cover artist for 20 years (1994-2014).

Robert Grossman passed away in his sleep in March 2018 at age 78.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/robert-grossman-illustrator-who-caricatured-presidents-and-designed-airplane-poster-dies-at-78/2018/03/20/19b8209c-2c4c-11e8-8ad6-fbc50284fce8_story.html?
utm_term=.faf9f9cbce98

my thanks to Stephen Kroninger, John Wendler, Peter Kuper, Steven Heller, Jim Engel & Ed Edo Dennis

Robert Grossman was the editor of The Yale Record, and created this parody cover
of The New Yorker

Grossman cartoon from the Yale Record, reprinted in harvey Kurtzman's HELP!
magazine

art by RG for MONOCLE (1963)

comic strip for MONOCLE

First cover for TIME: Curtis LeMay/George Wallace/1968

From EYE magazine/1967
http://drewfriedman.blogspot.com/2011/05/rock-pile.html

LBJ channels "Punch"

Mick Jagger

Ronald Reagan/Rodant

John Lindsay

Tom Jones

Howard Hughes

Alexis Smith

Mr. Spock

Chrysler chairman Lynn Townsend (Esquire)

Poster art for the "1970 Senators for Peace and New Priorities" Rally at Madison Square Garden held on March 12, 1970.

various drawings for The Realist...

Tricia Nixon

Sammy Davis, Jr/Richard Nixon

early seventies NBC TV stars

From the Beatles Illustrated Lyrics book
Back in the USSR

Joe Namath

Hugh Hefner

From AUDIENCE magazine, the evolultion of a Playboy Bunny...

A 1972 Chicago Sun-Times supplement. The Marx bros are depicted playing "Pinchy-Winchy"-a game they played where you pinched the cheek of the guy next to you as described in the article, (right after mentioning singing "PEASY WEASY")