Art Fitzpatrick

Arthur "Art" M. Fitzpatrick (November 24, 1919 – November 16, 2015, also known as "Fitz") was an American art director best known for his automotive art and advertising illustrations. Arguably, his most notable work was on the Pontiac "wide-track" campaign between 1959 and 1972 while working with Van Kaufman. Fitzpatrick had several careers over eight decades, including automobile designing, art director and stamp designer. Towards the end of his career, he designed two series of automobile stamps for the U.S. Postal Service, released in 2005 and 2008.

In 1936, Fitzpatrick enrolled at the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts (now the College for Creative Studies). At that time, he was 18 years old and worked at Chrysler at night to pay his way.John Tjaarda, the head stylist at the Briggs Body Company, hired him as an apprentice designer, where he worked on various projects for Chrysler, Packard and Lincoln. Fitzpatrick is credited with designing the 1940 Packard 180 sedan.

He moved to California with his parents in 1938 and took a job with Howard "Dutch" Darrin, where Fitzpatrick developed designs for Darrin-modified Packards.

Fitzpatrick served in the Naval Aviation Training and the Naval Office of Research and Invention during World War II, then landed a contract to illustrate Mercury's postwar ads before he left the Navy. After World War II, Mercury signed Fitzpatrick to create advertising images. While at Mercury, Fitzpatrick began working with Van Kaufman, a former Disney animator, whose specialized in figurative and scenic drawing.

In 1953, General Motors hired Fitzpatrick and Kaufman to serve as the Buick division's advertising artists. They moved to Pontiac in 1959 to produce the artwork for the Pontiac "wide-track" campaign, which concluded in 1972. "Wide-track was the longest, and arguably the most successful, ad campaign in American automobile industry history. In 1972, Fitzpatrick and Kaufman moved to General Motors' European subsidiary, Opel, where they produced advertising artwork for several years.

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