Mort Künstler

"[1] Künstler began his career in the 1950s as a freelance artist, illustrating paperback book covers and men's adventure magazines.

And by the 1970s he was painting covers for Newsweek, Reader's Digest, and other magazines, with the bulk of his work during that period in advertising art.

While many of his early magazine illustrations were for public entertainment, Künstler eventually began creating military art.

Collections of Künstler's work are published as limited-edition prints, and his artistic output places him at the forefront of contemporary historical realism.

He earned awards for basketball, diving, football and track, and ultimate honors in the Brooklyn College Sports Hall of Fame.

But after his father suffered a heart attack, he returned to New York to help his family, and enrolled in the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

[6] Among the artists whose work he studied that would influence his later career were Norman Rockwell, Winslow Homer and Frederic Remington.

That goal became difficult at the time, which led him to work instead as an apprentice at a studio, where he ran errands, cleaned up and touched up paintings by other artists.

Künstler wanted to be a professional illustrator, but discovered that the early 1950s was a bad time to enter the field, since photography and television were replacing the need for artists.

Almost always six days a week, from nine o’clock in the morning to ten or eleven at night.”[5] Eventually he began to share a studio with another already established adventure artist, George Gross,[12][13] whose family was friends with his.

As a result, says Künstler, “I wasn’t just a kid working out of his house anymore... George sort of took me under his wing, and he taught me whatever he could.

It was a wonderful thing for me.”[5][10] Künstler began working full-time as a freelance artist, illustrating magazine covers and paperback fiction adventure books, typically oriented toward men, such as Sports Afield, Outdoor Life, and Stag.

[14] Künstler credited the experience gained from illustrating men’s adventure magazines in the 1950s and 1960s with teaching him how to compose and tell a story, which he said prepared him for his later work.

[10] In the 1970s, Künstler painted covers for Newsweek, Reader's Digest and other magazines, although the bulk of his work during this period came from doing advertising art.

In 1977 his military art drew attention from even more important galleries, which made him widely recognized as an accurate historical artist.

[10] Hammer said "his paintings have continually confirmed his talent, and the caliber of Künstler's overall artistic output has now placed him at the forefront of contemporary realism.

[23] In 1982, after getting a commission from CBS-TV to do a painting for the 3-part mini-series, The Blue and the Gray (televised November 1982,) Künstler's interest turned towards the Civil War.

[22] It meant he needed to consult with expert historians and walk the actual battlefields before drawing them, always looking for landmarks to incorporate into the artwork.

In preparation for his 1992 painting, “The Gunner and the Colonel,” for instance, he researched the exact uniforms the soldiers wore and even the weather on that day, to learn which way the wind was blowing so the flags were unfurled in the right direction.

Historians including James M. McPherson would state: Of all the artists working in the Civil War field, none captures the human element, the aura of leadership, the sense of being there and sharing in the drama, quite like Mort Künstler.

[15] His final painting, completed in 2019, was a scene of General Robert E. Lee on Saint Simon Island in Georgia early in the Civil War, according to his daughter Jane, who is also his business manager, as cited in his Newsday obituary.

"[1] Civil War historian Harold Holzer, formerly with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which owns the original Leutze painting, called Künstler "the best-known and most respected historical artist in this country.