James Sante Avati (December 14, 1912 in Bloomfield, New Jersey – February 27, 2005 in Petaluma, California) was an American illustrator and paperback cover artist.
While Jim was still young, his father died and another aunt and uncle helped to raise him in Little Silver, New Jersey, where he grew up.
After World War II, Avati obtained a job designing display windows at Fifth Avenue department stores in New York.
But he continued to paint on the side and in 1948, impressed Kurt Enoch at New American Library, a new paperback publishing house.
He had stopped painting towards the end as he was losing his eyesight due to macular degeneration and died (February 2005) at age 92.