Powerhouse Anita Kunz

Anita Kunz is powerful and beautiful.

Everybody loves Anita Kunz. She is one of our global creative industry's most passionate and pervasive artists. She has won many, many awards and accolades—all deserved. She is involved, present, passionate. She has published more work than almost anybody. Her work always stands out. She is not afraid of tough subjects. At times her work is in your face: it grabs attention. There is no one more fearless. And no one nicer.

She says the things that inspire her the most are science, anthropology, politics, and human behavior. Her work embraces all of these.

She teaches workshops. She lectures around the world. In addition to her personal work, she creates illustrations for both editorial and advertising including award-winning portraits of celebrities and CEOs. I have always sensed her home in Canada is a creative refuge where she can work, retreat, and refresh away from the hubbub of life-at-large.

Anita has produced cover art for numerous high-profile magazines. I love her editorial illustrations, in particular those for Rolling Stone and The New Yorker. Editorial is a world where one can be expressive and bold...perfectly suited for her.

Her biography posted on her website, anitakunzart.com, sums up her dizzyingly copious achievements:

Canadian by birth, Anita Kunz has lived in London, New York and Toronto
She has been widely published in Germany, Japan, Sweden, Norway, Canada, South Africa, Holland, Portugal, France and England
Her work has been seen in Time, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, GQ, The New York Times, Sony Music, Random House Publishing and many others
Articles about her work have appeared in Graphis and Novumgebrauchsgrafik magazines (Switzerland), Communication Arts and Step by Step magazine (USA), Idea, Illustration and Creation magazines (Japan), Applied Arts (Canada), Nuvo (Canada) and The Design Journal (Korea)
From 1988 to 1990 she was one of two artists chosen by Rolling Stone magazine to produce a monthly illustrated History of Rock ‘n Roll end paper
She has produced cover art for many publications including Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, Time, Newsweek, The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times Magazine
She has illustrated more than fifty book jacket covers
Anita frequently teaches workshops and lectures at universities and institutions internationally, including the Smithsonian and the Corcoran in Washington DC
Her summer workshops have been conducted at the Illustration Academy in Sarasota Florida, and at the Masters of Art degree program at Syracuse University
She has been honored with many prestigious awards and medals and her critically acclaimed paintings and sculptures have appeared in galleries world wide, including the Norman Rockwell Museum in Massachusetts and the Teatrio Cultural Association in Rome, Italy
Her works are in the permanent collections at the Library of Congress, the Canadian Archives in Ottawa, the McCord Museum in Montreal, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome
A number of her Time magazine cover paintings are in the permanent collection at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC
In 1987 she showed a collection of her works at Canada House in Trafalgar Square, London
In 1997 she had a one woman show at the Foreign Press office in New York City
In 1998 she had a solo show at the Creation Gallery in Tokyo
The Society of Illustrators Museum of American Illustration mounted a mid-career retrospective of her work in the fall of 2000
She has had solo shows at the Govinda Gallery in Washington, DC, the Art Institute of Boston, and Massachusetts College of Art and Design
In the fall of 2003 she was the first woman and the first Canadian to have a solo show at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC
In 2000 she was invited to speak as one of The New Yorker magazine cover artists at the annual New Yorker Festival in New York
In 2001 and again in 2004, she was invited to speak at ideaCity in Toronto, a think tank of luminaries from the fields of medicine, politics, science, and the arts
In spring of 2007 Anita gave a presentation about her New Yorker covers at the prestigious TED conference in Monterey, California
From 2000 to 2003 she served on the Board of Directors of the Illustration conference
In 2004 she served as chair for the Society of Illustrators Museum of American Illustration annual exhibit, and she has most recently served as chair of the Museum Committee there
In 1997 she received the Les Usherwood Lifetime Achievement Award from the Advertising and Design Club of Canada
In 2016 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Applied Arts magazine in Toronto
Anita has been named one of the fifty most influential women in Canada by the National Post newspaper
She has received an Honorary Doctorate from the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, and a second from MassArt College of Art and Design in Boston
She has been appointed Officer of the Order of Canada, Canada’s highest civilian honor, and recently received the Queen’s Jubilee Medal of Honor
She was inducted into the Museum of American Illustration Hall of Fame in New York in 2017