Nurit Karlin

Nurit Karlin was born in 1938 in Jerusalem

Nurit Karlin was born in 1938 in the Talbiyeh neighborhood of Jerusalem. She was the youngest of 3 daughters of a banker father and a homemaker mother.

She served in the IDF and later studied graphic design at Bezalel from 1958 to 1961. She then worked in Tel Aviv at an advertising firm and at the studio of Arie and Dani Karman. In 1964 she went to New York to study animation at the School of Visual Arts.

In New York she worked for graphic designer Alan Fletcher and as a freelance animator making commercials. Her cartoons appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Playboy and Newsweek. In 1974 she became a regular cartoonist at The New Yorker and stayed for 14 years, drawing simple, mostly wordless cartoons.

In 1978 she published No Comment, a collection of her New Yorker work. After leaving the magazine she wrote and illustrated children's books, including The Fat Cat Sat on the Mat in 1996.

In 2004 she returned to Israel and lived in Tel Aviv, where she drew political cartoons and volunteered with the Yesh Din organization for 10 years. She died on April 30, 2019, and her archive was given to Columbia University.