Les Kouba

Les Kouba was born on 3 February 1917 on his parents’ farm, about two miles east of Hutchinson, Minnesota. He sold his first painting at 11, to a farmer, for $8. At 14 his parents enrolled him in a correspondence art course, which Wikipedia calls his only formal training, and at 15 he left home to paint for a living: trucks, signs and wall murals.^1,2

In 1946 he opened Kouba Advertising Art in downtown Minneapolis. His break came through the calendar firm Brown and Bigelow, and he painted the cover of Sports Afield for October 1950. In 1952 he founded The American Wildlife Art Gallery in Minneapolis.¹

He designed two federal duck stamps, for 1958 and 1967, and won the Minnesota waterfowl stamp competition in 1978. His official site credits him with more than twenty conservation stamps.^1,2

Headin’ for Shelter, his print of pheasants on a farm, came out in 1974. Kouba called it the A-bomb that started the wildlife art boom in America and said it brought in more than a million dollars. Demand ran so far ahead of the edition that he painted the same thirteen birds twice more, as In Shelter and Leavin’ Shelter.^4,3

Ducks Unlimited named him its artist of the year in 1976 and 1977, and his 1976 print for the organization, Bluebills in Lifting Fog, set a fundraising record. The National Museum of Wildlife Art calls him one of the artists responsible for the revival of wildlife art in the 1970s.^2,1,8

He died in Minneapolis on 13 September 1998. His official site says an unfinished painting was in his room, and that he painted to the end.¹