Arthur Fitzpatrick
Van Kaufman
1968 Pontiac GTO - National Ad
Van & Fitz
Gouache

This famous team, commonly known as “Van and Fitz” or “Fitz and Van”, created one of the most memorable illustrated campaigns in history, an epic twelve-year run of stunning ads for Pontiac. Running from 1959 to 1971, Pontiac consciously chose illustration so that new Wide-Track advertisements would stand out against the trend towards photography. The artists’ work is recognizable for its monochrome palettes and their jaunty initials, “AF VK”, found in the corner of all their work.

Dennis Gripentrog
1963 Pontiac Tempest - Brochure
Studio Photographic
Hand colored c-print

Gripentrog won a Gold Medal in the 15th Bravo Awards, sponsored by the Art Director's Club of Detroit in 1963. His work on the 1963 Tempest catalog helped to revolutionize the use of photography in auto advertising. The campaign focuses on a highly psychological narrative told through extremely artistic photos.

Photography has always been a component of automotive advertising, but because illustration offered a way to manipulate a car’s size, and because illustration could be in color, photography took a back seat until the 1950s. At that time, technological advances allowed photography to match and surpass illustration in vibrancy and versatility.

Many developments from the 1950s on signaled the approaching end of illustration’s heyday. Photography was perceived as more versatile—a photo shoot could result in hundreds of possible images from innumerable angles, instead of just one illustration. Because of this, the advertising world, always considering the bottom line, felt photography was cheaper and faster.

Color photography overtook and almost wholly replaced illustrated advertising by the 1970s. This exhibit contains a quintessentially American story of the loss of an industry, a language, a lifetime’s worth of skill and talent, superceded by an emerging technology.

One can see the innovations and incredible skill with which illustrated work was rendered, in no small part because photography and television were increasingly dictating the look and possibilities of advertising, and illustrators adapted to keep up.

Take a look at John Ball’s blue 1971 Barracuda [cover image] or Van and Fitz’s Pontiac GTO [at left]. Look at how realistic and stylish they are—they could easily be mistaken for photographs. They attest to the sheer excellence of rendering and style spurred on by competition with photography. Although artists and studios were faced with obsolescence, their final works shine brightly.