Anatol Kovarsky at 94: Still Drawing After All These Years

Above: an unseen, unused New Yorker cover sketch by Mr. Kovarsky.

Michael Maslin interviews veteran cartoonist Anatol Kovarsky, whose first cartoon in the New Yorker appeared in 1947.

It's a heartfelt and heart warming interview with the painter and cartoonist, who first sold a cartoon when Harold Ross was running the magazine.

For me, it was a rather surreal moment shaking Kovarsky’s hand. I had long ago placed him in my thinking — and rightly so– in the late Harold Ross, early William Shawn era of the magazine’s history, what some have referred to as “the Golden Age” of the magazine’s cartoons. In 2013, if you count the number of New Yorker Golden Age cartoonists who are still with us — those who began contributing to the magazine during the editorship of Harold Ross — you will count no further than four: Frank Modell, Dana Fradon, James Stevenson, and Anatol Kovarsky. Meeting these artists is meeting New Yorkerhistory. In the past two months I’ve had occasion to speak to three of these men, and all three exhibit the playfulness of spirit I’ve encountered in most every cartoonist I’ve ever met, no matter their age.

The rest is here.