Fischetti Travel Sketches

Sketches from
the
John Fischetti Manuscript Collection
at
Columbia College Chicago

"Main Street St Laurent Brittanny"

France, 1945

New York, 1948

"American shoes proved to be much more interesting
to the Danes than the American wearing them"

"The Danes really live when they greet each other"

"5 O'Clock Rush"

Denmark, 1949

"Traffic"

France, 1949

"Journal de Paris - McCarthy: 'J'accuse!!' "

Paris, 1953

"Rialto Bridge Venice"

Italy, 1960

President Kennedy's Oval Office

Washington DC, 1961

"Other side of the tracks -- Canal Street"

Chicago, 1970

"It's windy"

Washington DC, 1970

All illustrations are © the Estate or Assignees of John Fischetti.
The images have been posted here with permission.

"John Fischetti was born in Brooklyn, New York on Sept. 27, 1916, the youngest in an Italian family of four children. His urge to draw developed early and, in fact, he graduated from the Pratt Technical Institute before earning his high school diploma. After graduation he went to California and worked for the Disney Studio.

Eye strain forced him to give up animation and he moved to Chicago where he began working for Coronet and Esquire magazines. When Marshall Field started the Chicago Sun and bought up the Coronet/Esquire syndicate, Fischetti began doing political cartoons for the Sun; however, World War II intervened and he spent the latter part of it cartooning for Stars and Stripes.

When his Sun job was no longer available after the war, he moved to New York and joined Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA), and then the New York Herald Tribune. It folded in 1966 and he moved back to Chicago and the Chicago Daily News, where he was given complete autonomy to choose his styles and topics.

Fischetti was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1968. After the Daily News ceased publication in 1978, he finished his career at the Chicago Sun-Times. John Fischetti died on Nov. 18, 1980." [source]

Following Fischetti's death, an annual editorial cartoon award was established in his name, administered by the School of Journalism at the Columbia College in Chicago. [link]

The John Fischetti Manuscript Collection was recently digitised by Columbia College and includes a large number of the artist's sketch books encompassing original political cartoons, completed comics, preliminary and rejected drawings and a collection of his travel sketches.

The travel collection is a fascinating record of mid-20th century urban settings in its own right, but it also showcases Fischetti's undeniable talents as an animator, caricaturist, sketch artist, wit and observer. {I confess to not even having seen any of his political/satirical cartoon and comic work yet}

Via the Visual Resources Center blog at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. Thanks again Mike!