Victor Juhasz was born in Newark, New Jersey. He exhibited an interest in drawing early in life but needed the prodding of his high school art teacher to abandon a fantasy of becoming a cross-country truck driver (in retrospect, a really awful idea) and recognize his calling to be an illustrator.
A graduate of the Parsons School of Design in New York City, 1975, Victor began illustrating in 1974 for THE NEW YORK TIMES while still a student. His humorous caricatures and illustrations have been commissioned by major magazines, newspapers, advertising agencies, and book publishers, both national and international and his clients have included TIME, Newsweek, The National Observer (Canada), The Wall Street Journal, Esquire, GQ, ALTA Magazine, Men’s Journal, The Village Voice, The Washington Post, Oxford University Press, Harper Collins, St. Martin’s Press, Grove/Atlantic, Sierra, Opera News, The Nation, The International Red Cross, Bozell, Foote Cone & Belding, Ogilvy & Mather, Werbeagentur Robert Putz (Germany), Proctor & Gamble, Morton Swinsky Productions and Jeffrey Richards Associates (Broadway producers). For 15 years, starting in the mid 90’s, Victor’s illustrations accompanied David Feherty’s hilarious “Sidespin” columns for Golf Magazine. His work with David extended beyond the magazine pages to collaborations involving various Feherty initiated charities including raising funds for wounded veterans, via Feherty’s Troops First Foundation, and youth in need. He was a long time contributor of front page images for The New York Observer working with the much loved editor, Peter Kaplan. His parody of Norman Rockwell’s “The Runaway”, for the Village Voice, is part of the permanent collection of the Norman Rockwell Museum. Victor has been a frequent contributor of satiric images and caricatures, since the mid 2000's, to the National Affairs section in ROLLING STONE magazine. His work for the National Affairs section of Rolling Stone Magazine was noted in the Alexander Gibney HBO documentary on the history of the magazine, “Stories from the Edge” (2017).
Caricature and humorous illustration comprise a significant body of his work, but Victor’s love of drawing has allowed him to cross over to other aspects of the profession, in particular, reportage. As a courtroom artist, his work for ABC-TV included the kidnap trial of Seagrams heir Samuel Bronfman II, the arraignment of the notorious Son of Sam, and for The Washington Post, and the trial of John Hinckley for the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan. He has drawn arraignments and trials of alleged terrorists as well as the Knoedler art forgery trial, 2016. In 2023 Victor’s courtroom style drawing was utilized in the HBO mini series “White House Plumbers”.
Victor was a member of David Feherty’s Troops First Foundation, accompanying golf pro tours of bases in Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan during Thanksgiving week in 2008, 2010, and 2011 drawing soldiers and Marines and sending the originals to their families before Christmas. He has posted about those missions in Drawger.com.
Victor has contributed artwork as part of the USAF Art Program in conjunction with the Society of Illustrators and his work is part of the permanent collection of the USAF in the Pentagon. His assignments have included documenting, through drawings and paintings (many of which have been posted on Drawger.com), the training of Special Ops Combat Control and ParaRescue Jumper units. In early 2011 he began collaborating with The Joe Bonham Project, started by former U.S. Marine combat artist, Michael D. Fay, drawing and painting seriously wounded soldiers and Marines at Bethesda Naval Hospital, now Walter Reed, and McGuire Hospital in Richmond, VA, part of an artist documentation of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His drawings and paintings were part of a large, month long, comprehensive exhibition of The Joe Bonham Project at the Pepco Edison Place Gallery in Washington, DC, in November 2012. In recent years he has embedded with and visually documented the training of Marines at bases around the country as well as overseas missions (Iraq, Kuwait). His work is part of the permanent collection of the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Virginia. In April, 2017 Victor was presented with the prestigious John Thomason Award for his work documenting the activities of the Marines Corps.
In August of 2011, Victor embedded as a combat artist with the 1-52nd Arctic Dustoff, an Army helicopter MEDEVAC unit in Kandahar, Afghanistan for two weeks accompanying the medic teams on missions recovering the wounded. In an article titled, “An American Artist in the Combat Zone” the illustrations along with his writing were featured in an app for iPad and for GQ online in July, 2012.
In the Spring of 2012, Victor was invited to speak about his drawings of wounded veterans as well as combat/witness art at a first ever military sponsored TEDx event at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois. It was at the TEDx event that he met Jules Shell, co-founder of Foundation Rwanda. In August 2013, he accompanied volunteers to Rwanda to document through drawings the work of Foundation Rwanda assisting the women who were victims of rape during the genocide 20 years ago and the children they bore as a result of those rapes.
Victor also illustrates children’s books, which have resulted in critically acclaimed and award winning books for Sleeping Bear Press that include D is for Democracy: A Citizens Alphabet and Everyone Counts (both authored by Elissa Grodin), R is for Rhyme which received a starred review from Kirkus, H is for Honor-A Military Family Alphabet, Z is for Zeus, and G is for Gladiator: An Ancient Rome Alphabet. HOT DOG!, with author Leslie Kimmelman, for Sleeping Bear, about the famous hot dog barbeque hosted by Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt for the King and Queen of England in 1939 was published in April 2014 to glowing reviews and several awards.
Victor serves on the Board of Directors of the Society of Illustrators in New York City, has appeared in numerous annual exhibitions, and has been the recipient of gold and silver medals and citations for his illustrations in particular the Society’s Arthur William Brown Award in 2012 for his work documenting and bringing greater attention to our troops in harms way with focus on the returning wounded, and in January 2013, a gold medal and the Society’s prestigious Hamilton King award for his embed work in Afghanistan. In February 2014, he was awarded a silver medal by the Society for his drawings documenting Foundation Rwanda that appeared in the New York Observer. He received the Steven Dohanos award in 2022 for his visual documentation of inmates at Rikers Prison.
In 2016, the Brinton Museum in Big Horn, Wyoming, hosted a one man exhibition of Victor’s work, focusing on his children’s book work as well as the war art. He returned as an artist in residence at the Brinton in 2018, and has been contributing to exhibitions there since. His artwork is included in the permanent collection of the museum.
In 2015, assisting esteemed courtroom artist Elizabeth Williams, Victor helped assemble a group of artists, of which he was part, to create portraits of members of the NYPD, both living and dead, who, as a result of 9-11 exposure at Ground Zero and related locations had their health critically impacted. The artwork was on display at the Senate Russell Building in December, Washington D.C. for a press event with attending members of the NYPD, NYFD, NY Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, and former NY Police Commissioner William Bratton to press for permanent renewal of the Zadroga Health Benefits Act. It passed.
In 2018, then Society of Illustrators director Anelle Miller asked Victor to be part of an art program she had initiated with the New York City Department of Corrections, at Rikers Island. Since then they have brought an element of creative potential to the incarcerated, with Anelle doing much of the instruction and guidance and Victor focusing on portraits of the inmates as part of a visual documentation.
Collaborating on extended projects with authors of note has kept Victor busy in recent years. He has worked on two children’s books with acclaimed writer and expert on Stoicism Ryan Holiday. “The Boy Who Would Be King”, about the great Stoic Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, published by Ryan through his The Daily Stoic website in 2021, has received glowing reviews for the artwork accompanying Holiday’s text. It was soon followed by “The Girl Who Would Be Free”, a story about the great Stoic slave, Epictetus, in 2022.
In 2023 Victor enjoyed collaborating with the distinguished best selling author Steven Pressfield, contributing over 50 illustrations to his latest book, “The Daily Pressfield”, a day by day guide to overcoming fear and resistance and other blocks to the creative process.
In 2024 Victor circled back to the world of golf, working with author, marketer John Rota on John’s book, “Let Go, Let Golf”, a philosophical, meditative approach to playing the game that is receiving great reviews. The publication of these books continues to generate interest among authors wishing to collaborate with Victor on new projects.
He lives in the New York Berkshires with his wife, Terri Cole, a psychotherapist, author, instructor, and speaker. They have three sons and seven grandchildren, 8 hens, 1 rooster, 2 geese and a pit mix pooch named Charli.