Arnold Roth

This is an article about Arnold Roth, the cartoonist. See also Arnold Roth (Captain America) and Arnie Roth, the musician.

Arnold Roth (born February 25, 1929) is an American freelance cartoonist and illustrator for advertisements, album covers, books, magazines and newspapers.

Novelist John Updike wrote, "All cartoonists are geniuses, but Arnold Roth is especially so."

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Roth graduated in 1950 from the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts) and began freelancing in 1951.

The following year, he married Caroline Wingfield, and the couple later moved to New York City. They have two sons, Charles and Adam.

Roth's art is in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Cartoon Art (San Francisco), Philadelphia's Rosenbach Museum and Library and the Karikature and Cartoon Museum (Basel, Switzerland), plus many private collections.

His traveling solo exhibition, Free Lance, A Fifty Year Retrospective (2001-04), was seen in Philadelphia, Columbus, San Francisco, New York City, London and Basel. He has staged solo exhibitions at the Philadelphia Print Club, University of the Arts, New York's Century Association and Swarthmore College.

In addition to his artwork, Roth plays the saxophone.

Contents

Magazines

Roth has done covers for The New Yorker and his artwork has appeared in TV Guide, Sports Illustrated and Esquire. His cartoons and illustrations were contributions to the satirical magazines edited by his friend Harvey Kurtzman: Trump (1957), Humbug (1957-58) and Help! (1960–65). Roth’s cartoons began appearing in Playboy in the late 1950s. Playboy published ten multi-page installments of his An Illustrated History of Sex series in the late 1970s. Roth was a regular contributor of cartoon features to Punch from the late 1960s until the end of the 1980s. Roth had multi-page features in almost every one of the first 25 issues of National Lampoon (1970-72) until his last satirized the editors of the magazine. He was a political cartoonist for The Progressive from 1981 to 1987.

Comic strips

Roth drew the comic strip Poor Arnold's Almanac as a Sunday strip from 1959 to 1961. He brought it back as a daily panel in 1989-90. Fantagraphics Books published a collection of this strip in 1998.

Awards

He received the National Cartoonists Society Advertising and Illustration Award (1982, 1984, 1985); Illustration Award (1976, 1979, 1981); Magazine and Book Illustration Award (1986, 1987, 1988); Special Feature Award (1979); Sports Cartoon Award (1976, 1977); Reuben Award (1983); and their Gold Key Award (their Hall of Fame) in 2000. He served as the organization’s president from 1983 to 1985.

On June 25, 2009, Roth was inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame which honors artists for their “distinguished achievement in the art of illustration.” Past Society presidents select inductees based on their body of work and the impact on the field of illustration. Roth was previously recognized by the Society of Illustrators with numerous Silver and Gold Stars.[1]

Further reading

Books written and illustrated by Arnold Roth

Books illustrated by Arnold Roth

Album covers

Roth created cover art for jazz and folk albums:

References

  1. ^ Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame

External links