Automotive ad legends Fitzpatrick and Kaufman “were not mere mortals”
It’s been said you should never meet your heroes because they’ll never live up to your expectations. Rob Keil didn’t find that to be true. Instead, he learned that sometimes your heroes turn out to be bigger, better, and more fascinating than you ever imagined. Book-worthy, even.
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“Fitz and Van are legends, the best of the best,” says Keil, author of the newly released, 200-page retrospective Art Fitzpatrick & Van Kaufman: Masters of the Art of Automobile Advertising, published by Advection Media. “You don’t have to love cars to love their work. A lot of people know their ads without knowing who they were.”
Keil used to be one of those people. He was only 10 the first time he saw one of the duo’s Pontiac illustrations while flipping through the pages of his dad’s old National Geographic magazines. Keil immediately fell in love