Mort Künstler, born just sixty-six years after the Civil War ended, is now 78, and is arguably, a national treasure.

Though best known for his work on “The War,” Künstler is a living connection to that generation of artist-illustrators who, for many, defined their perceptions of the adult world of childhood, and beyond.

Künstler has often donated art for good causes, especially to promote historic preservation and discussions are currently underway with the Mosby Heritage Area Association to commission a series of his pieces.

The plan is to ask him to capture the rich history that took place in Northern Virginia geography with an emphasis on the light cavalry struggles of the friends and foes of John Singleton Mosby between 1861 and 1865.

The Boy from Brooklyn

Künstler was born in Brooklyn in 1931, and came of age during the Great Depression and Second World War.

He insists he was born with two talents, and art is the second he mentions.

“One was athletics, believe it or not. I was a very skilled athlete, though a little on the fragile side.”

A track star and a swimmer, at 18, he took a fourth in the Penn Relays 400-meter hurdles, threw championship javelin, and was on the diving team.

While a student athlete at Brooklyn College, he was awarded a basketball scholarship to UCLA. His dream was to play center field for the Brooklyn Dodgers. His oldest friends, he says, are jocks: among them coaches and Olympic medalists. And some of the first works of art he ever sold were diagrams of football and basketball plays, for a book by one of his coaches, and later for Scholastic’s Coach Magazine.

The Young Artist

“I guess I was born to be an artist,” Künstler says now.

The combination of being a tough-minded, never-give-up, Brooklyn kid, with no fear, and a body that tended to break, meant that he wasn’t destined to challenge The Duke for his spot in center.

Very early he had shown a special talent for art.  At age three he copied the work his older sister brought home from kindergarten. Happily, his parents encouraged him.

After Brooklyn College and UCLA Künstler studied at the Pratt Institute, and became a much sought after free-lance commercial artist.

“People think that I just paint the Civil War,” he said, “but I’ve painted, oh, four or five thousand pictures by now.”

In his early career he gave life to the covers and characters found in nearly all the country’s most important, classic and beloved mid-twentieth century print media: from The Saturday Evening Post, to True and Argosy; from Mad Magazine to the box tops for plastic models; from pulp novel covers to posters for blockbuster movies and hit TV shows.

As a recognized “collectable” artist, fans sought out his work on traditional themes from the American West.  It was great work, he said, but after a time, it became, somehow, repetitive.

“How many tired cowboys framed by a sunset can you paint?”

His first Civil War piece was a cover for True: a dead-tired rebel soldier, from an unidentified unit, at an unknown time, taking a drink from his canteen.

The 1961-1965 centennial of the Civil War led to several commissioned pieces, and a lifelong interest in The War.

Asked why, despite his “south Brooklyn” birth, so many of his paintings focus on the soldiers of the south, he thought a minute, and then mused, “Somehow, the paintings seem to mean more to Southerners. They still live among the battlefields. Family ties run deep and strong.”

While working on art for the movie, “Gods and Generals,” Künstler says Robert Duvall (who played Robert E. Lee), expressed some surprise that Künstler was born “a Yankee.”

Laughing while he tells the story, Künstler says, “I told him I was born in SOUTH Brooklyn . . . though I went to Abraham Lincoln High School.”
For Künstler the real joy of painting lies in bringing to life, to the best of his ability, a story, a human experience, rooted in time and place, but rising above both.

Pulitzer Prize winning Princeton Professor of American History James McPherson, arguably the dean of the nation’s chronicler’s of the Civil War, puts it this way:

“Of all the artists working in the Civil War field, 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.”

Indeed, his very name means, “artist.”

On November 21, Künstler will be at the Warrenton Courthouse, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., signing books and prints of his latest painting The Gray Ghost,  depicting First Lieutenant John S. Mosby.  For details, contact Mark Moore at Framecraft galley, 64 Main Street, in Warrenton, VA.  Telephone #540-341-0001.

An autographed and framed limited edition print of his painting of Jackson’s “Foot Cavalry,” Old Mill, Strasburg, VA, June 1, 1862, is currently being auctioned by the Mosby Heritage Area Association. Ticket sales end at Midnight, Dec. 3, 2009.

The drawing will take place Friday, Dec. 4, 200.    For details and to purchase tickets, please visit the Association’s web site:  www.mosbyheritagearea.org.

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