Auto Artist Art Fitzpatrick Passes

Image Courtesy Carart.us

November 20, 2015; Hemmings Daily reported that 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.

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