NORMAN KUCHARSKY, Artist

            Norman Kucharsky, 1914-1999

Generations of TV viewers saw his artwork, but few knew the artist behind the work.

From television’s debut in the early 1950s until his retirement in 1979, Norman Kucharsky was a graphic artist for the CBC and Radio-Canada in Montreal. There, he helped produce all manner of visuals for the two networks, long before the computer replaced the paint brush as the graphic artist’s tool.

He was best known locally for his station identification breaks that were broadcast every half hour. Many of these breaks portrayed scenes of Montreal’s distinctive neighbourhoods, street-life and architecture, which aimed to “bring out the colour of the city,” as he put it.

His talent first came to the forefront at Baron Byng High School, where he was known as the class artist and doodling on book covers and scraps of paper took up almost as much time as learning. “One of my uncles was an artist who did the displays at the local movie house and I guess I got the inspiration from him. I went to art school at night and thought about doing the same thing.”

Before his Second World War military service, Norman painted store signs and created stage sets and displays for night clubs and took night courses in art at the Monument National and the Ecole des Beaux Arts.

War service

While in the military, Norman carried a sketch pad in his knapsack and sketched whenever he had a spare moment. Until he was wounded in the leg by a bullet during a 1944 battle in Holland, he did reconnaissance work, sketching towns for army intelligence. “I made sketches of army life and my officer promised that he would see to it that I should be an army artist, but I was wounded not long after that and hostilities were practically over when I recuperated.”

Confined to hospital for three months, he kept himself busy painting war scenes, sketching the wounded in the wards and drawing flattering portraits of the nurses, which he gave to them.

In 1944, his water colour “Sally Ann, Petawawa,” depicting soldiers at an army training barracks entering the Salvation Army in Petawawa, Ontario won second prize in the Canadian Army Art Exhibition and appeared in Canadian Art magazine. His water colour “Dugout in Belgium,” picturing soldiers in their dugout smoking at dawn, also won a second prize award at the Overseas Army Art Competition in 1945 (see Home page for both).

New York training

After returning from the service, he headed to New York, determined to be a trained artist. There, he discovered art schools, famous artists and instructors while he eked out a living working for advertising agencies. He studied Chinese paintbrush manipulation at Columbia University in a course given by Dong Kingman, a leading American watercolourist. He also took courses at the American Art School with instructors Robert Brackman, Raphael Soyer (famous for his depiction of the everyday life of Jewish New Yorkers) and William Gropper and at the Brooklyn Museum with David Stone Martin.

After returning to Montreal, he married Frances Yaffe and became the father of three children (Cyndi, Judy and Danny). From 1946 to 1953, he worked as a freelance commercial artist for numerous firms as well as full-time for design firm Rapid Grip and Batten, doing advertising design, layout and lettering for brochures, newspapers and magazine advertisements. (Toronto-based Rapid Grip and Batten was home to many of Canada’s premier designers and painters during the first half of the 20th century, including members of the Group of Seven.)

CBC/Radio-Canada

In 1954, Norman applied for a job at the newly-created French-language TV station at Radio-Canada (an English-language station at CBC in Montreal followed soon after) and was hired to do all types of art work for various programs. “When you tried for a job at CBC in the old days you wouldn’t stand much of a chance with a name like Kucharsky. So I called myself Kirk and had no difficulties,” he recalled in an interview, soon after retiring. “Now, after so many years, it’s a little strange signing my name Kucharsky ... but it feels good.”

One of his first jobs for CBC was to replace the old photo of Mount Royal that it had been using over and over for its station breaks with some new paintings of Montreal. He began painting announcements – One Moment Please, Do Not Adjust Your Set – and titles, cartoons and backgrounds for a number of programs. For years, he did a number of watercolour drawings every week for the Radio-Canada nature and science shows La Vie Qui Bat (Pulse of Life) and  Atomes et galaxies, and accompanying guide books for the shows that identified birds and trees.

He created cartoons and stage sets for the long-running children’s show Chez Hélène which taught French to generations of English-speaking children. While working for that program and a religion show, he was also asked to become a courtroom artist for CBC news. “I protested. How could they expect me to do crime figures and criminals and the children’s and religious stuff at the same time? The spirit was different. But they patted me on the back, smiled and said, ‘Go on, you can do it.’ So I did.” He covered crime commissions, Henry Morgentaler abortion trials and the Malouf inquiry into cost overruns at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, among others.

In addition to painting station identification breaks of Montreal scenes for CBMT/Channel 6, he also created Christian holiday station breaks for a number of years before hitting upon the idea of drawing scenes of Jewish holidays as well. As a result, viewers saw biblical scenes ranging from the shofar being blown during the High Holidays to Moses being confronted by the burning bush during Passover.

Corner grocers and dépanneurs

Norman also delighted in drawing Montreal’s old fashioned grocery stores and dépanneurs, many of which have fallen victim to the wrecker’s ball. “I had a feeling that these colourful stores were going to disappear in a short while,” he said. “I felt that it would be interesting to have reproductions made as a keepsake of a time gone by.”

He had “vivid memories” of his grandmother’s grocery store “with its large shop windows and small stoop and bright green frame work and the nostalgic aroma of fresh fruit and spices vying with the scent of vinegar from the pickle barrels” and where “we depended on the iceman to keep our provisions fresh.”

Twenty of his watercolours and acrylics of corner stores and dépanneurs were exhibited at Montreal’s Maison de la Culture Côte des Neiges and at the Saint-Laurent Library in 1985.

As a sideline, he created a series of greeting cards, portfolios, bookmarks, coasters, tablemats and plates depicting scenes of Old Montreal and downtown Montreal, which were sold in department stores and gift shops.

In his retirement, he produced a series of paintings based on biblical scenes, taught calligraphy and drawing at Vanier College, the Saidye Bronfman Centre and school boards, and produced hand-drawn diplomas. He and Frances spent winters in the Algarve, on Portugal’s southern coast, where he drew a wide variety of scenes depicting Portuguese life.

His artistic talent proved to be limited only by his modesty. Far less skilled artists with better marketing prowess saw a greater measure of recognition during their careers.

The following pages provide just a fraction of Norman Kucharsky's artistic output during his career.

For more information, please contact Danny Kucharsky at dannyk@videotron.ca