A Textbook Example: Sandy Kossin

For the longest time, the only piece by Sandy Kossin I had in my magazine collection was this striking image below.

Boy, did I hope to find more! There's so much raw energy - yet a beautiful accomplished simplicity - in this illustration that I knew I'd love whatever else the artist might have done. But finding other examples in my 1950's issues of the Post, Colliers, etc. proved fruitless.


Then last summer, while on vacation in Orlando, FL, I found an old textbook, "Widening Circles", in a used bookstore. Among the illustration credits: Sandy Kossin.


This Harcourt Brace Primary Reader from 1970 suggested that Kossin's style had changed dramatically since the 1950's. Or was this simply another style that Kossin employed when doing humorous children's material?


I did a little searching around on the internet and discovered that some of Sandy Kossin's originals are available for purchase at Graphic Collectibles. Judging by the dates, Kossin was doing his more realistic style, in a great many variations, well into the 1980's. The images there are fantastic - and I highly recommend you take a look at them. (My favourite is a piece called "Movie Star")

As well, my buddy, Mike Lynch, has a post from September 2006 featuring Sandy Kossin and other members of the reknowned Long Island chapter of the National Cartoonists Society, The Berndt Toast Gang.


The short bio at Graphic Collectibles tells us that Sandy Kossin did in fact do illustrations for all the major magazines so I'll be looking more closely for examples I can bring you in the future. He also did over 500 paperback book covers!

That got me checking the photostream of one of my fellow Flickerites, grrl8trax, who has one of the greatest collections of paperback cover scans on planet Earth. Sure enough, her archive includes a set of 15 Sandy Kossin covers that will blow your mind.


This week, we'll look at some other artists who's work appears in "Widening Circles" and other old textbooks. Some names will be familiar ones and others you'll be hearing for the first time. But all, I think, will prove to be interesting and inspiring.

And that's what its all about, right?

My Sandy Kossin Flickr set.