John Fischetti

John R. Fischetti (September 27, 1916 – November 18, 1980) was an editorial cartoonist for the "Chicago Daily News".

In 1969 he won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning. He also received the National Cartoonist Society Editorial Cartoon Award for 1962, 1963, 1964, and 1965. Columbia College Chicago has for the past two decades sponsored an annual national editorial cartoon competition in his memory.

Biography

Born in Brooklyn, New York, he studied commercial art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn for three years starting when he was 19. He moved to California, where he worked for the Walt Disney Studio in Burbank. He began his career as an editorial cartoonist at the Chicago Sun in 1941. In 1942 he joined the staff of Stars & Stripes as war-time artist. He donned his mufti in 1946. From 1951 to 1962 he was a syndicated cartoonist for the Newspaper Enterprise Association. He then joined the New York Herald Tribune, departing in 1967 when that paper folded. In 1967 he moved back to Chicago and joined the Chicago Daily News, which ceased publication in 1978. He joined Bill Mauldin at the Chicago Sun-Times two years before he died of a heart attack in 1980. He published a compilation of his cartoons "Zinga Zinga Za".

Style

Fischetti, like many of his colleagues, favored heavy use of crayon, pencil or ink brush in a vertical format at the beginning of his post-war career. By the 1960s, as his style matured, he began using a horizontal pen & ink style that betrayed his roots in animation, Fischetti satirized politics, fads and social issues.

Citation: "Biographical Sketches of Persons Selected for the Pulitzer Prizes for 1969, "New York Times", May 6, 1969, p. 34"Cartoonist Was a Champion of Underdogs, Pulitzer Winner Sought to 'Dream Impossible Dreams for Mankind,' "Los Angeles Times", Nov. 24, 1980, p. B27.

External links

* [http://www.reuben.org/ncs/awards.asp NCS Awards]
*http://johnfischetti.org/