Morton Künstler

1931 - 0000

Though widely known for his Civil War paintings today, Morton Künstler’s career as a painter has been long and varied. Mort demonstrated a talent for art very early on, attending art classes on Coney Island. With the encouragement of his parents he managed to become a skilled artist by the time he was just 12 years old. After high school he pursued a formal art education, attending Brooklyn College, University of California, Los Angeles, and Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York.

In the 1950s Künstler worked as an illustrator in New York City, producing illustrations and covers for Male, Stag, For Men Only, and True Adventures magazines. By the 1960s he was producing illustrations for more mainstream publications, like the The Saturday Evening Post, Field & Stream, Newsweek, Good Housekeeping, Argosy, and National Geographic. In fact, he was so prolific that he sometimes illustrated under other names such as Martin Kay and Emmett Kaye, so that a magazine appeared to be using more than one illustrator. During this time he also illustrated movie posters, including posters for The Poseidon Adventure and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.

By the early 1970s Künstler’s work began to attract the attention of collectors. And, by the late 1970s his primarily Western paintings were featured in a one-man exhibition at the Hammer Gallery in New York City. More than a dozen more one-man exhibitions at the Gallery followed over the years. In 1982 Künstler was commissioned by CBS to do a painting for the television mini-series The Blue and the Gray. The painting, titled High Water Mark, was unveiled at the Gettysburg National Military Park in commemoration of the 125th anniversary of the battle. Focusing on producing meticulously researched historical paintings of the Civil War, Künstler became the most respected Civil War artist. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James McPherson said, "Of all the artists working in the Civil War field," he observes, "none captures the human element, the aura of leadership, the sense of being there and sharing in the drama, quite like Mort Künstler. He has that enviable talent of being able to re-create history on canvas and to translate events into art.” In 1992 Künstler was commissioned to produce a painting of the Buffalo Soldiers for the U.S. Postal Service, which was issued in 1994.

In 2011, Künstler was commissioned to paint Washington crossing the Delaware. Washington's Crossing was unveiled at the New York Historical Society on December 26, 2011 to great critical acclaim, which eventually led Künstler to begin a major body of work on the American Revolution in 2013.

Other subjects featured in Künstler’s paintings have included: World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Oklahoma Land Rush, immigrants on Ellis Island, and the Space Shuttle Columbia.

Künstler’s paintings are in the permanent collections of more than 50 museums. His paintings have been exhibited in more than 60 one-man shows in museums nationwide and have been featured in more than 20 books, which have sold over 500,000 copies. But, claims Künstler, who still lives and paints in Oyster Bay, New York, “I never worked a day in my life.”

THE VANISHING AMERICAN Oil on Masonite 1981 22 ¾ x 30 inches