| Bill
Charmatz (1925 - 2005)
Born in Brooklyn, New York with the name of Adolph Charmatz
to Russian immigrant parents, Bill Charmatz became an advertising
and newspaper illustrator, often with a unique, whimsical
combination of Impressionist and Cartoon styles. He was best
known for
pictorial essays depicting the "joy and folly of sporting
events" in the magazine Sports Illustrated in the 1960s
and 1970s. Included were drawings of baseball, football and
ski teams, which combined a sense of the sweat and grit of
the occasions but "always filtered through his light-hearted
perspective." However, not all of his subject matter was
light hearted. For a magazine published by Exxon-Mobile Company,
he did a sensitive series about the daily life of a French
family living on an oil barge.
His goal in his drawings was to convey a sense of immediacy,
and he often labored over just the right shape of a line
to achieve his desired effect.
Charmatz attended the High School of Industrial Arts in
New York, and announced to a teacher there that he hated
the name Adolph and was adding the name William as his first
name. From then on, that new first name was shortened to
Bill.
He served in the Navy in the Graphics Unit during World
War II and made precise charts. He then studied in Paris
at the Ecole Beaux Arts in 1949 and from 1951 to 1952, at
the Grande Chaumiere. During the late 1940s, he worked for
Alexey Brodovitch, the Art Director of Harper's Bazaar, who
encouraged Chavatz to make drawing from a bicycle trip to
France. This trip resulted in more than a hundred drawings
and watercolors of everyday life in that country and led
to frequent commissions from Esquire, TV Guide, Time, Life
and The New York Times.
From 1996 to 2004, he was a regular illustrator for the
Book Review section of the Times for the Crime column.
He has also done mural commissions, was a long-time member
of the Society of Illustrators and was a book illustrator
for Macmillan, Grosset & Dunlap and Ballantine as well
as others. He did several children's books including My Little
Duster and published a collection of cartoons that played
with the words 'dear, deer, deranged', etc.
He died at age 80 in Manhattan where he lived on the Upper
West Side on September 5, 2005.
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