Untitled Political Cartoon, 1990
Print, 15 1/2" x 11"
Herbert Lawrence Block, the political cartoonist better known as "Herblock,", was born on October 13, 1909 in Chicago, Illinois. Block began taking classes at the Art Institute of Chicago at the age of eleven. After graduating from high school, he attended Lake Forest College, but never received a degree. After beginning to work for the Newspaper Enterprise Association, Block won his first Pulitzer Prize in 1942 for his political cartoons. Block joined the Army in the same year, and was hired by The Washington Post upon his discharge. Block became the most honored cartoonist of his time, winning three Pulitzer Prizes, was the only living cartoonist whose work was exhibited in the National Gallery of Art, and the only living cartoonist to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He caricatured thirteen U.S. presidents, from Herbert Hoover to George W. Bush, chronicling American history from the 1929 Stock Market crash through summer 2001. He took on causes with courage and conviction, coined the phrase "McCarthyism," forced reform and became the most influential and enduring political cartoonist in American history. Herbert Block’s work was inspired by such artists as Jay Darling and Edmund Duffy. Block died on October 7, 2001.