An Artist You Can’t Refuse: Mort Künstler

Making a slight adjustment to his jawline — by stuffing cotton wool in his cheeks — Marlon Brando snagged the lead in “The Godfather,” and arguably gave his greatest performance. “He tried to look like the Don Corleone I created,” says Mort Künstler. The 92-year-old artist who lives in Oyster Bay first gave the mob boss visual form in his 1969 cover illustration for Male magazine, where a synopsis of Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather” initially appeared. Now, that image of the crime family kingpin commands the front jacket of an exhibition catalog and the front lobby of the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington announcing a show of more than 80 original pulp fiction works from the 1950s through the 1970s by the prolific Long Island artist…

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