ILLUSTRATORS : David Klein (1918-2005)

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David Klein was born in El Paso, Texas in February of 1918. He moved to California where he attended the Art Center School [later renamed the Art Center College of Design] in Los Angeles.
During the 1930s, he was an active member of the California Watercolor Society. This group of artists often chose to paint watercolors depicting scenes of everyday life in the cities and suburbs of California. They painted directly with little or no preliminary pencil drawings, and used paper as a ‘color’ in a new and creative way.
During that period, David Klein displayed his work regionally, most notably at the 1940 Golden Gate International Exposition.
David served in the army during the Second World War, where he illustrated numerous army manuals. In 1947, the U.S. Air Force received some 800 works of art from the U.S. Army and in 1953, in conjunction with the Society of Illustrators, (of which David Klein was a long-time member), the Air Force Art Program was formed. This collection features several of Mr. Klein’s works, some of which have been exhibited at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C.
After the war, David Klein moved to New York and settled in Brooklyn Heights, where he would live for the next 60 years. In 1947, David Klein worked as an art director at Clifford Strohl Associates, a theatrical advertising agency. Before long, David became the illustrator of choice for many of Broadway’s best-known shows of the period. David’s poster/window cards from this period include: Death of a Salesman, Brigadoon, Most Happy Fella, The Music Man, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. This body of work remains one of the enduring hallmarks of this golden age of Broadway.
David Klein is best known, however, for his influential work in the field of travel advertising. During the 1950s and 1960s, David Klein designed and illustrated dozens of posters for Howard Hughes’ Trans World Airlines (TWA)...

go read the rest of his story on his WEBSITE and there is so much more to see over there. beautiful.

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