Bill Bernbach was a discoverer. He was the art directors first great benefactor. He arrived on the advertising scene at exactly the right moment, when the great war was over, when America was changing, when people were thirsting for a new grace and clarity in this brave new world. Bernbach had a vision unlike any…

Bert Stern, one of the legendary figures in contemporary photography, personified the commercial photographer as cultural hero in the 1960s. Hugely successful in the worlds of fashion and advertising photography, in the late 1960s he operated a studio, not unlike Andy Warhols Factory, from which he created countless award-winning ads, editorial features, magazine covers, films,…

Spending time with Bert Steinhauser, either in person or through his work, is an exhilarating experience. His ebullient personality, coupled with his love for his craft and for humanity make him a dynamic one-man show. Born in Brooklyn in 1928, Steinhauser attended Samuel J. Tilden High School and received the school’s art medal. From there…

Creator of the Macy’s slogan “It’s great to be thrifty” and “Nobody, but nobody, undersells Gimbels,” Fitz-Gibbon, former ad manager at Marshall Field’s, Macy’s, Gimbels and Wanamaker, became retailing’s most important and highly paid advertising director. She influenced department store and fashion advertising by introducing “events” — fashion shows, dance instruction, lectures, demonstrations, etc. —…

Ben Shahn. His codified signature neatly scribbled under any of his images conjures up a peerless world of visual and emotional realism. Born in Kovno, Lithuania in 1898, Ben Shahn and his family immigrated to the United States in 1906. Like many artists, he later used his childhood experiences in both Lithuania and Brooklyn to…

Bea Feitler was born in Brazil, the country to which her parents emigrated during World War II. Through their influence, she received a traditionalist education, stressing knowledge and excellence in all areas. She spent her college years at the Parsons School of Design, graduating in 1959. At that point, she returned to Rio de Janeiro…

Barry Blitt is a cartoonist and illustrator, who through his many New Yorker covers, has become one of the pre-eminent American satirists. He is probably best known for The Politics of Fear, his provocative July 2008 image of Michelle and Barack Obama, dressed as a Muslim and a militant with an AK-47, fist-bumping in the…

For Bjarne Martin Pedersen, everything in life matters, whether it’s sweeping a floor or designing a magazine. In fact, one of the most important lessons he learned about design was while sweeping sawdust off the floor as an apprenticing laborer for an old-world Norwegian carpenter in the 1950s. “I learned a work ethic,” he recalls.…

Even as a teenager, Art Paul had rebellious notions about what an illustrator should paint and what a painter should illustrate. He could not accept the distinction between “high art” and “low art” and admiredNorman Rockwelland Michelangelo equally. So frequently did he argue with his high school art teacher that he was amazed when she…

Art Spiegelman has, according to theLA Weekly, almost single-handedly brought comic books out of the toy closet and onto the literature shelves. In 1992 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his masterful Holocaust narrativeMaus, which portrayed Jews as mice and Nazis as cats. The twoMausbooks have been translated into over 25 languages, and the work…