Pat Oliphant, Cartoonist Who Skewered the Powerful, Dies at 90
Source: NYT gift link
Pat Oliphant, the dean of political cartoonists, who drew and sometimes eviscerated a rogues’ gallery of presidents, pedophile priests, warmongers and other editorial-page villains for American newspaper and online readers for half a century, died on Monday in Santa Fe, N.M. He was 90.
His son, Grant Oliphant, said he had died at home of age-related health issues.
With an impious eye for wickedness in high places and a deft left hand for pen-and-ink drawings, the Australian-born Mr. Oliphant moved to the United States as a young man, quickly won a Pulitzer Prize (which he disdained), and became one of the nation’s best-known political cartoonists, syndicated in as many as 500 American and foreign newspapers. He was showered with awards, and his work was featured in magazines and galleries and collected in books and museums.
A largely self-taught artist who also created bronze sculptures and painted in oils, Mr. Oliphant skewered powerful public officials and religious institutions with such boldness and acid wit that a Washington Post critic once said, “If Pat Oliphant couldn’t draw, he’d be an assassin.” In 1990, a profile in The New York Times Magazine called him “the most influential editorial cartoonist now working.”
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/13/arts/pat-oliphant-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.xlA.Y7R7.iCZtmFAr9RlW&smid=nytcore-ios-share
I really liked his political cartoons.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Wow, I loved alot of hs stuff! Mostly during Nixon 's terms. Missed a lot Reagan's, Carter's cartoons, and beyond; basically bc I was no longer seeing his works in whichever newspapers I was reading.
So it might be an intermittent piece showing up in Time Magazine bc I did see a bit of G HW Bush's term.
I don't remember if he lived in Denver for a while but my mom was at a hospital for several months for new treatments for asthma in ?1970; and I rhink she sent me some of his cartoons bc they appeared in the Denver Post.
Anyway I think I asked her to write him and request an autograph. Anyway he did send a cartoon w autograph and I think a little note.
The cartoon that Iimmediately flashed through my mind on reading this was re. Nixon going to China.
Nixon is walking past a portrait of ? John Foster Dulles on the wall (left side of cartoon); JFD sort of partly leaning out of the picture frame and yelling at Nixon....
"That's my boy?!" And Nixon ( center right of the page) is cringing; paetly covering his face w arm held over his head.
