Daniel
Robert Fitzpatrick was born in Superior, Wisconsin in 1891. After
attending Chicago Art Institute he worked as a cartoonist for the
Chicago Daily News and St.
Louis Post-Dispatch.
Influenced by the work of Robert Minor,
Boardman Robinson, and Rollin
Kirby, Fitzpatrick drew with a grease crayon. His work was never
funny but as he admitted, the main purpose of his art was to express
"sympathy for the underdog".
Daniel
Fitzpatrick, One Person Out of Every
Ten, St Louis Post-Dispatch (16th January, 1938)
Fitzpatrick
was a supporter of women's suffrage
and the trade union movement and during
the 1930s led the attack against the mergence of fascism in Europe.
One critic, Stephen Hess, has argued that Fitzpatrick played a significant
role in changing American public opinion on Nazi
Germany: "Daniel Fitzpatrick, one of the masters in the use
of symbolism, transformed Nazi Germany's swastika into a horrific
death machine. As Adolf Hitler's armies marched across Europe in the
1930s, Fitzpatrick used his symbol repeatedly to challenge America
to rethink their isolationist stand and enter World War II."
Fitzpatrick twice won the Pulitzer Prize
for cartooning: The Laws of Moses and the
Laws of Today (1926), and
How Would Another Mistake Help?
(1955). He retired in 1958 and was replaced on the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch by another radical cartoonist, Bill
Mauldin. Daniel Robert Fitzpatrick died in 1969.
Daniel Fitzpatrick, St Louis Post-Dispatch (1939)
Available
from Amazon Books (order below)
