Gil Cohen is an American artist, noted for his illustrations of aircraft and people in military service, who also illustrated men's magazines, books and movie posters.
Biography
Gilbert B. Cohen was born to Philip and Hannah Cohen on July 28, 1931 and raised in Philadelphia where his Russian-immigrant grandparents and father operated a hardware store. He trained as an illustrator at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art, where he studied under artists Karl Sherman, Henry C. Pitz, Albert Gold, Joe Krush and S. Gertrude Schell, and then graduated in 1953. Soon thereafter, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and assigned to a military intelligence unit in Germany where he rendered images of Soviet weaponry, based on verbal espionage reports. Upon his release from the Army, he resumed his chosen career in commercial art and illustration. As of 2017, Cohen maintained a studio at his home in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
Career
Cohen's artistic career spanned more than six decades of producing images for men's magazines, movie posters, books, government agencies, and later producing carefully researched fine-art oil paintings of aviation and war-related subjects. He also assumed both teaching and administrative duties in his field of illustration. He is an Artist Fellow of the American Society of Aviation Artists.
Aviation art
Cohen’s interest in aviation began as a youth during the Second World War, when he became proficient in identifying a wide variety of aircraft of the time. This interest was renewed, when he became interested in producing World War II aviation art, which included a series of paintings depicting the activities of the Eighth Air Force—examples of which were exhibited in a one-man show at the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force in Pooler, Georgia for six months, starting December 1988. In 1997, he began publishing limited-edition prints of his aviation art, which were distributed through art-print vendors in the U.S. and Great Britain. A retrospective of Cohen's aviation art was published in 2009. A reviewer of Cohen's body of work noted that it both presented faithful depictions of aircraft and, more significantly, focused on the people involved and the emotional energy that they brought to their activities. He traveled under the auspices of the U.S. Air Force to theaters of conflict in Bosnia, Somalia, and Central Asia and also to Israel to create paintings that he donated to the U.S. Air Force Art Program.
Illustration art
During the 1950s and 60s, Cohen worked as a free-lance illustrator for men's adventure magazines—a common genre of the time. One such publisher was Magazine Management Company—with magazines that included Male, Stag, and For Men Only—whose assignments required complex illustrations, executed on a short deadline, often involving duotone technique. A 1961 assignment for Argosy magazine to illustrate a serialized version of Ian Fleming'sJames Bond novel, Thunderball, led to later assignments from another publisher to illustrate book covers for the Mack Bolan series of The Executioner novels by Don Pendleton. His illustration work expanded to more mainstream clientele that included the U.S. Information Agency, the National Park Service, Paramount Pictures, Bantam Books, Harlequin Books, Random House, Holt Rinehart & Winston, Warner-Lambert, the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Guard Bureau, and the Boeing and Sikorsky Aircraft companies.
Teaching
In 1966, Cohen received an invitation to teach at his alma mater; this led to a part-time position as an instructor and to increasing academic responsibilities. He taught figure drawing, anatomy and illustration over the course of 21 years.
Other activities
Cohen has assumed administrative duties in the art world, as well. As part of the board of directors for the New York–based Society of Illustrators, he chaired its U.S. Air Force Art Program—providing travel opportunities for artists to depict the mission of the U.S. Air Force at bases around the world. In his work with the American Society of Aviation Artists, he served variously as vice-president and exhibition committee chair; he received the ASAA Service Award for his work with the society.
Recognition
Cohen's work was exhibited in venues that included:
