Gouache Car Ads from the 1960s

The colorful worlds of Fitz and Van

Many of the car ads that appeared in the magazines and car brochures in the 1960s were gouache paintings created by a duo named Fitz and Van.

“Fitz,” was short for Art Fitzpatrick. He painted the cars, while “Van,” or Van Kaufman, did the people and backgrounds.

An article authored by Arthur St. Antoine, Editor at Large, Motor Trend has some interesting technical notes. For example:

"To produce his famous “wide” look, Fitzpatrick traced photos of the new car, cut the tracings into pieces, then ‘stretched’ the car into bolder proportions.

‘We wanted pictures that were different,’ Fitzpatrick says. ‘Impact is the name of the game, so we went with predominately front views—even cropping the cars so they looked too big for the page.’

The two artists would then trade the image back and forth, Kaufman (who died in 1995) adding the people and the backdrops (often featuring such exotic locales as Monte Carlo, Corfu, and Acapulco), Fitzpatrick painting the car and tying it all together with the color and reflections of the scene.’

Fitzpatrick said: ‘I’ve always maintained that a picture of a car moving doesn’t mean a thing. They all move. You have to convey something about the car psychologically. It’s all about image. That’s the reason people buy cars.’

Fitz and Van were so successful that their car ads changed the fortunes of major car companies in the 1950s and '60s.

When Fitz started as a car illustrator, the standard illustration produced by his competitors showed the car against a white background.

But over the years the mood and setting became extremely important to create the aspirational mood for the upwardly mobile middle class of the postwar era.

Van’s backgrounds were more than vague backdrops. They built the fantasy. The settings evoked an upscale lifestyle of travel and leisure. At one point one of the agency art directors suggested painting the car in a suburban driveway with laundry on the line. Fitz knew that what interested potential customers was a ticket to the "good life," with romantic possibilities, affluent leisure, and no kids.

Approvals and Payments

They were rare among advertising illustrators in that they were allowed to sign their work with the initials "AF VK." They also had complete creative control over the car colors and elements of the scene. Fitz had direct contact with the senior management of the car companies, which allowed him to circumvent the usual approval chain of the ad agencies.

They demanded and received huge sums for their work. In the late '50s they received from Pontiac about $5,000, at a time when the average annual U.S. household income was about $5,500.

Secret Techniques Revealed