“Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves they have a better idea.”
– John Ciardi, American poet (24 June 1916 – 30 March 1986)
Erich Sokol (31 March 1933 – 20 February 2003) was an Austrian illustrator and caricaturist best known for this tremendous illustrations for Playboy magazine.
Born in Vienna, Sokol illustrated jokes and political cartoons for publications like Neuer Kurier, Die Presse, stern, Die Bühne, Wiener Bilderwoche, Schweizer Illustrierte Zeitung, Arbeiter-Zeitung, Weltpresse and Münchner Illustrierte. Drawings by him were also bought and published by the English magazine Punch.
Erich Sokol’s very first cartoon for Playboy, from the August, 1957 issue.
A recipient of a Moholy-Nagy scholarship, Sokol moved to the US in 1957, where he studied at the Institute of Design of the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. During this time, he worked for Playboy. Hugh Hefner, Playboy’s founder and publisher of Playboy magazine, hired him as a regular contributor, which he remained for decades.
Playboy became a showcase for cartoonists such as Dink Siegel, Don Madden, R. Taylor, Buck Brown, Phil Interlandi, Rowland B. Wilson, John Dempsey, Eldon Dedini, Roy Raymonde, Doug Sneyd and Dean Yeagle. And then there were the articles…
As Illustration Art notes: “Although the beautiful girl was always the centerpiece of the cartoon, if you look closely you will see that Sokol had more fun painting the male counterpart – the fat doctor, the grizzled farmer, the blustering general all left him more room for creativity.’
Sokol in 1972 by Johann Klinger, Vienna
Sokol worked on a volume of satirical drawings depicting American characters. His American Natives was published by Harper & Brothers in New York, and later by Hamish Hamilton in London.
He continued working for Playboy until 1975.
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