Written by Dennis Hevesi Saturday, 26 March 2011 21:34

Andy Jurinko Dies at 71 ~ The Painter Whose Art Memorialized Baseball

New York (New York Times).- There is the panoramic view toward the Green Monster, the towering left-field wall at Fenway Park, on June 8, 1950, as the Boston Red Sox are crushing the St. Louis Browns, 24-9. There is the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Duke Snider at bat in Ebbets Field in July 1955, with the Schaefer Beer sign — “A real hit! A real beer!” — above the scoreboard and the Abe Stark clothing store sign below. There is Willie Mays making his incredible over-the-head catch in deep center at the Polo Grounds in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series between the Giants and the Cleveland Indians. And of course Mickey Mantle hitting another record setting home run.

Those are among the hundreds of vividly realistic oil paintings — in reds, blues, yellows and, of course, infield and outfield greens — that made Andy Jurinko one of the foremost baseball artists, known particularly for reprising the days when fans in fedoras and straw hats filled the stands. Mr. Jurinko, a Phillies fan, died of pancreatic cancer in February at his loft in Lower Manhattan, his wife, Pat Moore, said. He was 71.

“Where Jurinko really touched a chord was in his images of defunct ballparks,” said Marty Appel, who for 25 seasons, until 1992, was the Yankees’ chief publicist. “He recognized that baseball fans not only have an allegiance to the team, but to the ballpark. And when he reached back to those ballparks, people immediately recalled what it was like going to their first games with their dads.” Citing what he called Mr. Jurinko’s “impeccably drawn” works, Ray Robinson, the author of 35 baseball books, said: “He was a nut on stats — the exact number of feet to right field, center field, left field; the exact color of those advertising signs. He was the top of the craftsmen who did this kind of stuff.”

But Mr. Jurinko did far more than record vistas of ballparks, some of them in murals like the one of the old Yankee Stadium that covers most of a wall at Mickey Mantle’s Restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. He painted more than 400 portraits of star players and more than 150 action pieces. His first book, “Heart of the Game” (2004), which focuses on the American League from 1946 to 1960, includes images of Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams and Hank Greenberg at bat; Nellie Fox bunting; Luis Aparicio sliding into home; Roger Maris sprawled in the dirt after a knockdown pitch; Yogi Berra jumping into Don Larsen’s arms after Larsen’s perfect game in the World Series; and 3-foot-7 Eddie Gaedel pinch-hitting for the Browns. Another book, “Golden Boys,” which includes National League stars from the same era, is scheduled for release this year.




But for a wisp of good luck, those books would not have been published. Their core material, 650 photographic slides of Mr. Jurinko’s paintings, was nearly destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center came down. The south tower overlooked his loft. Although parts of the planes that struck the towers were found in the badly damaged loft, the slides were protected by a file cabinet. Most of Mr. Jurinko’s paintings are in private collections, but almost two dozen lithographs of his works are in the collection of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Andrew Floyd Jurinko was born in Phillipsburg, N.J., on June 17, 1939, one of three children of Andrew and Mae Wellen Jurinko. His father was a factory worker, and an avid baseball fan. Besides his wife, he is survived by his brother, Stephen, and his sister, Shirley Supp.Young Andrew, who began to draw when he was 3, played baseball in high school. He then attended an arts school in Philadelphia and started getting work as an illustrator. It was in the early 1980s that he started combining his passions, traveling to stadiums around the country and spending weeks poring over photographs at the Hall of Fame.

In 2004, asked why he had focused on the 1946 through 1960 seasons, he said, “I thought I’d like to pay homage to those guys who made $25,000 a year if they were lucky.”

A number of limited edition, signed lithographs by the artist can still be obtained through the artists website … http://www.jurinko.com

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