Edward Sorel (American born 1929)

A regular magazine contributor as a cartoonist, Edward Sorel has done commission work for The Atlantic Monthly, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, a publication for which he has created 45 covers.  He started in the industry in the 1960s when he was hired by editors of The New York Times and The Village Voice.

He greatly disapproves of being labelled as an illustrator because the term simply suggests a hired contractor, and he regards his work as much more creative than that, especially with talent needed for drawing.  He says:  "I never really interested myself in what constitutes fine art and what constitutes commercial art. I do what interests me."  In addition to cartoons, Sorel also does comic book art.  

One of his projects of which he is most proud is "Literary Lives" for Atlantic Monthly.  For this assignment, he read unauthorized biographies to get inspiration for his subjects.  Then he began by doing spontaneous pencil drawings.

Besides his 41 covers for the New Yorker, his art has appeared on the covers of The Atlantic, Harpers, Fortune, Forbes, The Nation, Esquire, American Heritage and The New York Times Magazine. He has illustrated many childrens books, three of which he also wrote. Unauthorized Portraits (Knopf 1997) is the most recent of several collections of his work.

A retrospective of his work was held at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC in Fall, 1999 where  several rooms were devoted  to an exhibition of his caricatures. Other one-man shows include the Graham Gallery and the Davis and Langdale Gallery in New York City, the Susan Conway Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Art Institute of Boston, and Galerie Bartsch & Chariau in Munich, Germany. He is a recipient of the Augustus St. Gaudens Medal for Professional Achievement from The Cooper Union, the Hamilton King Award from The Society of Illustrators, the Page One Award from the Newspaper Guild, the Best in Illustration Award from the National Cartoonists Society, the George Polk Award for Satiric Drawing, and the "Karikaturpreis der deutschen Anwaltschaft" from the Wilhelm Busch Museum in Hanover, Germany. In 2001 the Art Directors Club of New York elected him to their Hall of Fame, the first cartoonist since John Held, Jr., to be so honored.