Pat Oliphant, Cartoonist Who Skewered the Powerful, Dies at 90 [View all]
Source: NYT gift link
Pat Oliphant, the dean of political cartoonists, who drew and sometimes eviscerated a rogues’ gallery of presidents, pedophile priests, warmongers and other editorial-page villains for American newspaper and online readers for half a century, died on Monday in Santa Fe, N.M. He was 90.
His son, Grant Oliphant, said he had died at home of age-related health issues.
With an impious eye for wickedness in high places and a deft left hand for pen-and-ink drawings, the Australian-born Mr. Oliphant moved to the United States as a young man, quickly won a Pulitzer Prize (which he disdained), and became one of the nation’s best-known political cartoonists, syndicated in as many as 500 American and foreign newspapers. He was showered with awards, and his work was featured in magazines and galleries and collected in books and museums.
A largely self-taught artist who also created bronze sculptures and painted in oils, Mr. Oliphant skewered powerful public officials and religious institutions with such boldness and acid wit that a Washington Post critic once said, “If Pat Oliphant couldn’t draw, he’d be an assassin.” In 1990, a profile in The New York Times Magazine called him “the most influential editorial cartoonist now working.”
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I really liked his political cartoons.
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