Featuring the work of one the most skilled and prolific illustrators of the twentieth century, Mort Künstler: “The Godfather” of Pulp Fiction Illustrators showcases more than 70 original drawings and paintings that graced the covers of American magazines, paperbacks, and weeklies throughout the 1950s and ‘60s.  These dramatic scenes portray daring heists, POW escapes, standoffs with wild animals, and military strikes, revealing the anxieties and deep-seated desires that gripped the nation during the Cold War era.

Animals have long been a source of inspiration for many artists, spanning artistic time periods, themes, and styles. From surrealism to abstraction, to animals as mythical creatures or representations of people, wildlife has played an essential role in the scope of American art history.