Ilonka Karasz

Ilonka Karasz (July 13, 1896 – May 26, 1981), was a Hungarian-American designer, interior decorator, painter and illustrator known for avant-garde industrial design and for her many New Yorker magazine covers. In 1914, Karasz co-founded (with Winold Reiss) the European-American artists' collective Society of Modern Art, and shortly afterwards she was commissioned to create advertising for the department store Bonwit Teller. For a few years in the late teens she taught textile design at the Modern Art School.

Career

Textile and industrial design During her late teens, Karasz taught textile design at the Modern Art School, an institution founded in 1915, where she taught alongside Marguerite and William Zorach. Karasz and a group of other European-born artists and designers, including Winold Reiss, founded the Society of Modern Art in 1914. The organization published Modern Art Collector, which published much of Karasz’s early designs. Her first work presented in the journal was a theatrical poster with checkerboard motifs, a common Austrian-German graphic style. The publication also showcased her bold, stylized floral patterns, cover designs, book illustrations, typography, and decorative panels. She also tried to incorporate elements that would help very young children learn, such as color-coded knobs on dressers.

Illustration

During the illustration portion of her career, Karasz was often referred to as the “hermit painter”. This nickname, however, misrepresents the repeated work she completed for various Greenwich Village publications and the impressions she made on peers.