Eldon Dedini

Eldon Dedini (June 29, 1921 – January 12, 2006) was an American cartoonist whose work appeared in Esquire, The New Yorker, Playboy and elsewhere.

Life

Dedini was born in King City, California, on June 29, 1921; his father was a dairy farmer, his mother a schoolteacher. He studied at Salinas Junior College, where Leon Amyx was on the teaching staff, and then at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles. There he met Virginia Conroy; they were married on July 15, 1944. They adopted a baby boy called john in 1960.^[1]

Dedini died at his home in Carmel, California, on January 12, 2006 at the age of 84.^[1]

Exhibitions

• Broccoli & Babes: The Cartoons and Posters of Eldon Dedini: November 4, 2005—January 20, 2006 at the Sasoontsi Gallery, Salinas, Calif.
• Monterey Museum of Art "Arriola, Dedini, Ketchum" 1982

Awards

Dedini received the National Cartoonists Society's Gag Cartoon Award in 1958, 1961, 1964 and 1988.

Bibliography

• Illustrations for Bantam Books editions of Max Shulman works:
  • Rally Round the Flag, Boys!, (1958) (1959)
  • Barefoot Boy with Cheek (1959)
  • Sleep Till Noon (1959)
  • I Was a Teen-Age Dwarf (1960)
  • The Feather Merchants
  • Anyone Got a Match (1965)
• The Dedini Gallery. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York (1961)
• A Much, Much Better World. Microsoft Press, Bellevue WA (1985)
• Fantagraphics Books published a posthumous collection of his work, An Orgy of Playboy's Eldon Dedini (ISBN 1-56097-727-2) in 2006. Introduction by political cartoonist Dennis Renault. The book is bundled with a documentary "Dedini: A Life of Cartoons" by Anson Musselman.