Cartooning Children's Books Magazine cartoons Obituary

Nurit Karlin RIP

Skip to comments

D. D. Degg May 2, 2019 1 minute 1 comment

Cartoonist Nurit Karlin has passed away.

Updated May 8 with the New York Times obituary.

Nurit Karlin
December 26, 1938 – April 30, 2019

Michael Maslin is reporting the death of Nurit Karlin.

Ms. Karlin was the only female cartoonist in the pages of The New Yorker from [Mary Petty’s last cartoon in] April of 1966 through July of 1978 when Roz Chast’s first cartoon was published.

Author/illustrator of children’s books
New Yorker cartoonist 1974-1988

What is certain about her work is that it was firmly in the school of visual art. If you look through her 1978 collection, No Comment, you’ll be hard pressed to find a captioned drawing  — there isn’t one.  She used words in her cartoons, but sparingly, as in the drawing below from the issue of September 4, 1978.

May 3 Update:

When I asked Karlin where she got her ideas, she said, “If I knew where they came from, I would be the first in line! I used to doodle. Then something would be there.” Her work was unlike anything else being published in the magazine at the time.

Liza Donnelly remembers.

above: Nurit (right) with Liza Donnelly