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")

Groucho

William Burroughs

Dean Memminger

Milton Berle

George McGovern/Richard Nixon

Richard Nixon/Charles Colson

Nixon & Kennedy

Henry Kissinger

Dick Clark

J. Edgar Hoover

Jimmy Connors

Bobby Riggs

Joe Frazier

Co-author of "Candy" Mason Hoffenberg

Colonel Sanders

Agent Sam Cohn

Jerry Garcia

http://drewfriedman.blogspot.com/2011/11/robert-grossman-mad-covers.html

John Denver

John Entwistle & Ringo Starr

Gerald Ford

Ford and Kissinger

at the NY Democratic convention, 1976 (New York mag)

Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter/Gerald Ford

Carter/Brezhnev

Jimmy Carter

poster art by Robert Grossman

Children's Book Cover

Joe Paterno

Clark Gable

Marlene Dietrich

Laurel & Hardy

Various Grossman ads...

Earl Scruggs

Julia Child

unused poster art for "The Wanderers"

Steven Spielberg/ET

Jerry Lewis

George Burns

Jerry Brown

Jerry Brown

agent Sue Mengers

Cary Grant

John Lee Hooker

Elvis button

Barbra Striesand

Sigmund Freud on the Tonight Show

1978 poster art by RG

poster art by Bob Grossman

cover art for Donald Westlake novel

Ed Koch

Jackie Gleason/Art Carney

Ronald Reagan, Walter Mondale, Gary Hart

Monica Lewinsky

Robert A. Heinlein

George W. Bush

Barack Obama

Mitt Romney

"Celebrating Kurtzman" Panel Discussion 3/19

portrait of
Harvey Kurtzman 

On March 19th, New York's Society of Illustrators (128 E. 63rd St) will host a two hour panel discussion and graphic presentation in conjunction with the upcoming Harvey Kurtzman retrospective (opening 3/9 and curated by Monte Beauchamp and Denis Kitchen) "CELEBRATING KURTZMAN" with graphic humorists Drew Friedman, Robert Grossman, Al Jaffee, Arnold Roth, and moderated by Peter Kuper:

All about "The Art of Harvey Kurtzman" show:
http://www.societyillustrators.org/The-Museum/2013/Harvey-Kurtzman/The-Art-of-Harvey-Kurtzman.aspx

the rough cover art for MAD # 1 by Kurtzman
will be on display at the show

Space is limited for the panel discussion, so if you plan to attend, it would be smart to purchase your tickets ahead of time.

Celebrating Kurtzman A panel discussion with Drew Friedman, Robert Grossman, Al Jaffee, Arnold Roth and moderated by Peter Kuper

	March 19, 2013  6:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
	Legendary artists Drew Friedman, Robert Grossman, Al Jaffee, and Arnold Roth will discuss the life and works of Harvey Kurtzman with a panel moderated by Peter Kuper.   Tickets $15 non-members, $10 members, $7 students/seniors Click here to purchase ABOUT THE ARTISTS Drew Friedman is an award-winning illustrator whose work regularly appears in dozens of major publications.  For years he was renowned for his "stippling" style of caricature, employing thousands of pen-marks to achieve photographic verisimilitude, but in recent years Friedman has switched to painting.  His painstaking attention to detail and parodies of Hollywood icons is widely admired.  Friedman's work has appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Newsweek, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The New Republic, The New York Observer, Esquire, RAW, BLAB!, Rolling Stone, and MAD Magazine.  He is a graduate of SVA and studied under such legendary masters as Will Eisner, Ed Sorel, Stan Mack, Arnold Roth, Art Spiegelman and Harvey Kurtzman.   Robert Grossman is a New York artist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, The New Yorker, The New York Observer, Rolling Stone and many other publications.  Grossman also works as a sculptor, filmmaker, and author and has published numerous titles including ZooNooz and O-MANLAND, an online compilation of strips focusing on the 2008 presidential race.   Al Jaffee is best known for his satirical work in MAD Magazine, and today remains a regular contributor having only ever missed one issue of MAD in the last 57 years. Jaffee's trademark feature, the Mad Fold-in, was created in 1964 and a four-volume boxed set of hardcovers,The Mad Fold-In Collection: 1964-2010, was published by Chronicle Books in September 2011.  In 2008 Jaffee was honored by the Reuben Awards as Cartoonist of the Year. He has also received the National Cartoonists Society Advertising and Illustration Award in 1972, its Special Features Award in 1971 and 1975, and its Humor Comic Book Award in 1979.  Arnold Roth has been a humorous illustrator and cartoonist all his life and, for most of that time, has freelanced, snatching a living by hustling one assignment after another in a highly competitive market.  Roth's big breakthrough came in 1957 when he started working onTrump, Playboy's satiric magazine, and on Humbug, a more penurious production, both the inventions of Harvey Kurtzman.  His work has appeared regularly in major magazines including Sports Illustrated, Esquire, Holiday, Time, The New York Times, The New Yorkerand countless others.  In 1983, Roth was elected president of the National Cartoonists Society and the next year received the NCS Reuben Award as Cartoonist of the Year.     Peter Kuper's illustrations and comics appear regularly in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, and MAD, where he illustrates SPY vs. SPY every month.  He has written and illustrated many books including Comics Trips, a journal of an eight-month trip through Africa and Southeast Asia.  In 1979 he co-founded the political comix magazine World War 3 Illustrated. More info about the panel: http://www.societyillustrators.org/Events-and-Programs/Lectures/2013/Celebrating-Kurtzman/Celebrating-Kurtzman.aspx This was my 2012 Harvey Kurtzman memoir for THE COMICS JOURNAL: "SERIOUSLY FUNNY": http://www.tcj.com/seriously-funny/