INTERNATIONALLY ACCLAIMED ARTIST & PITTSBURGH NATIVE

Mozelle Thompson was born on December 13, 1926, and grew up in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, before his family relocated to the Garfield area of the Steel City. He graduated from Peabody High School.  Mozelle's artististic talent manifested early in life, nurtured and developed with Saturday morning art classes at the Carnegie Museum.

In 1944, Mozelle Thompson won Scholastic Art Awards for both painting and fashion designs, leading to his first published illustration in a national magazine, Mademoiselle, at the age of seventeen. A scholarship to the Parson’s School of Design in New York followed shortly thereafter, with additional artwork gracing the pages of Vogue and Glamour, as well as a second scholarship to study abroad in Paris and Rome.

Thompson still found time to regularly return to Pittsburgh, however, creating window displays and fashion advertisements for Gimbles Department Store. In 1953 Mozelle Thompson illustrated his initial record album cover, one of the first African Americans ever to do so. He went on to create an additional 120 similar illustrations before his untimely death in 1969, making him one of the most prolific album cover artists of all time.
The untold story of Mozelle Thompson