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By David Saunders

Norman Blaine Saunders was born January 1, 1907 in the northern wilderness of Minnesota. His 35 year-old father, Clare, was a war veteran and his 18 year-old mother, Elvira, was one quarter Iroquois Indian. After graduating high school, Norm was trained in art by correspondence courses with The Federal Schools Inc. of Minneapolis. Along with his diploma in 1927, Norm also received a scholarship to the Chicago Art Institute, which he soon forfeited when offered a full-time job on the art staff at Fawcett Publications in Robbinsdale, MN. Norm worked there for six years along with future pulp artists Allen Anderson, Ralph Carlson, George Rozen, and Carl Buettner. Norm moved to NYC in 1934 and studied night classes with Harvey Dunn at the Grand Central School of Art. By 1938 Saunders was a top pulp magazine cover artist, and by 1940 he had moved into the slicks. He was drafted by the Army during World War II and served one year in the military police before being trained in camouflage and sent to paint gasoline storage tanks along the Burma Road in China for the duration. Saunders returned to NYC in November 1945. He married his model, Ellene Politis, in September 1946 and moved to a Harlem townhouse and raised four children. After two years of unsuccesful attempts to work within the confines of post-war slick magazines, Saunders left the slicks and returned to working for pulp magazines, where he was in constant demand for the remaining years of that industry. He painted his last pulp cover in 1960. Saunders found all of his subsequent clients in the subculture publishing world of paperbacks, comic books, men's adventure magazines, and trading cards. Norman Saunders retired to his wife's hometown and died of emphysema at age 82 in Columbus Nebraska on March 7, 1989.

A new biography of the artist by his son David is available through Illustration Press