Bernie Fuchs was born in O’Fallon, Illinois in 1932.^[1]  His art career began after he graduated in Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri in 1954, and took his first job his first job was illustrating car advertisements for New Center Studios. It was the largest and most successful studio in Detroit in the ’50’s and 60’s. .

 In Detroit, Bernie was recognized immediately for his incredible talent and pulled in major accounts for Art Greenwald. Within a few years of moving to Detroit, Fuchs’ opened the studio The Art Group, which specialized in work for the city’s auto companies. In the late 1950s, Fuchs moved to Westport, Connecticut where he began doing illustrations for Mc Call, Redbook, The Ladies Home Journal, Sports Illustrated, Cosmopolitan, TV Guide and other magazines.

Fuchs was commissioned for the illustration of four U.S. postage stamps released in 1998. The stamps featured folk musicians Huddie ‘Leadbelly” Ledbetter, Woody Guthrie, Sonny Terry, and Josh White. Fuchs also illustrated several children’s picture books, including Ragtime Tumpie and Carolina Shout!, both written by Alan Schroeder.

He also painted portraits of several U.S. Presidents, including John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, as well as of such athletes and celebrities such as Muhammad Ali, Arnold Palmer,Jack Nicklaus, Ted Koppel and Katharine Hepburn.  In 1975, Bernie Fuchs was inducted into the Society of Illustrators  Hall of Fame, and an honor reserved for truly great illustrators such as Winslow Homer, Frederic Remington, Charlie Russell, Norman Rockwell, Mark English, and Maxfield Parrish.

At age 76, Bernie Fuchs died September 17, 2009 of esophageal cancer at a Fairfield, Connecticut care facility.