Phil Kantz, Artist

After getting married, my father began his career as a “commercial artist,” or what we now call a graphic designer. He worked for the Holtzman-Kain Ad Agency for a few years, but they also allowed him to keep his own phone on his desk and do outside work. He eventually struck out on his own as a freelance commercial artist with his own downtown Chicago office starting in 1960, the year my brother Gary was born.

As a freelancer, my father’s clients included McDonald’s, Standard Oil, Hammond Organ, Encyclopædia Britannica (where I would later work for almost 10 years), and educational publisher SVE. I remember his work at SVE the most, because he worked on educational filmstrips that appealed to my young age. As part of a filmstrip series on the alphabet, my dad was assigned the letter I, and his filmstrip story of Itzy Inchworm and Ida Ibis was a hoot at one of my class show-and-tells. I hope to dig out some of this advertising material and post it here. Please join our mailing list at the bottom of the page for any updates.

In the early 1980s, my father returned to his love of painting, and he started taking classes at the American Academy of Art in Chicago. Eventually he would join The Palette and Chisel Art Club, a Chicago-based community of artists who would bring in models for painting traditional forms. He was featured as a cover story on American Artist magazine in 1988, and he would go on to win national and Chicago-area awards for his work. He remained a member of the Palette and Chisel Club, where he would also teach painting classes, until the pandemic hit in 2020.

Here are a few more examples of my father’s artwork.

As my father traveled to his downtown Chicago office on the CTA El trains, he would often hone his skills by sketching the other riders. The following are part of a six-part set of prints that you can see on his website.

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I hope you’ve enjoyed On the Double! as well as the story of Phil Kantz and his artwork. Thanks for the inspection. Dismissed!