Pulitzer Prize-Winning Cartoonist Bill Mauldin's Original Drawings Being Sold At Auction By Family

By: Press Release | Heritage Auctions

Two dozen original editorial cartoons and comic strip panels from the estate of Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Bill Mauldin will be offered for the first time to the public in an auction later this month.  A dozen more will be auctioned early next year, and his family plans to donate additional cartoons to museums and historical societies.

Bill Mauldin is perhaps the most important editorial cartoonist since Thomas Nast, the late 19th century caricaturist whose editorial cartoons reflected and helped influence public opinion.  In addition, Mauldin was a soldier, patriot, American hero and a voice for the common man and woman,” said Ed Jaster, Senior Vice President of Dallas, Texas-based Heritage Auctions.

"Heritage will offer 25 original Mauldin drawings as a featured part of a major comics and comic art auction in Beverly Hills, California and online, November 20 to 22.  It includes editorial cartoons drawn for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Chicago Sun-Times, Collier's magazine and Stars and Stripes.  Ten other original Mauldin drawings will be offered by Heritage early next year," said Jaster.

Mauldin produced editorial cartoons for the Post-Dispatch from 1958 – 1962 and won the second of his two Pulitzer Prizes in 1959 for his Oct. 30, 1958 cartoon in the Post-Dispatch.  It depicted Russian novelist and political prisoner Boris Pasternak, author of "Doctor Zhivago," talking to another inmate in a Soviet prison camp.  The caption was: "I won the Nobel Prize for literature.  What was your crime?"

Mauldin died in California in 2003 at the age of 81.

He gained fame during World War II for his cartoons of “Willie” and “Joe,” GI Joe characters that appeared in Stars and Stripes newspaper.  He won his first Pulitzer Prize at the age of 23 in 1945 for his editorial cartoons he created during the war.

All his drawings have been kept in an art storage facility in Santa Fe, New Mexico since Dad passed away,” said Nat Mauldin of California, a movie and television writer and one of Bill Mauldin’s eight children.

He gave very few of his original political cartoons away over his thirty-five year career.  Most of his World War Two cartoons ended up at the Library of Congress and the 45th Division Museum in Oklahoma City.

Mauldin served in the Army’s 45th Infantry Division.

Nat Mauldin said he and his six surviving brothers decided last year to select a few works of art for their own personal collections and to auction three dozen through Heritage Auctions.

"We plan on donating the rest of the archives to a number of museums and historical societies that we're in the process of reaching out to.  There are also a handful of original Willie and Joe World War Two pieces in the collection, but at this point we plan on keeping those in the family," he explained.

For additional information about the upcoming auction, contact Heritage Auctions at 877-HERITAGE (437-4824), or see the Mauldin cartoons online here.