D'Alessio, Gregory

Gregory D'Alessio (1904-1993) was an American cartoonist, illustrator and painter. Born in New York City in 1904, D'Alessio worked as a bank clerk, Wall Street runner, and cub reporter for the Brooklyn Eagle . After the stock market crash, he began selling his drawings to popular illustrated magazines of the time, including the New Yorker, Esquire and the Saturday Evening Post . For more than twenty years (1940-1963) he drew the strip These Women for Publishers Syndicate. In 1961 he turned from cartooning to serious painting, and taught drawing, composition and anatomy at the Art Students League of New York.

Also a musician, D'Alessio was secretary of the New York Classic Guitar Society and, according to his biography on the National Cartoonists Society website, is "known throughout the guitar world as an essayist, memoirist, pedagogue, illustrator, editor and critic." In 1987 Walker & Company published his Old Troubadour, a memoir concerning long-time friend and fellow guitarist Carl Sandburg. D'Alessio was married to the noted artist and fellow Art Students League instructor, Hilda Terry (Hilda Terry D'Alessio).

From the guide to the Gregory D'Alessio Papers, 1940-1966, (Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries)