Pop artist James Rizzi dead at 61

James Rizzi applied his playful, cartoonlike art style to unusual projects worldwide, from Volkswagen Beetles and Japanese train ads to cow sculptures in New York and the front page of a German newspaper.

His creations included images for German postage stamps and a tourist guide to New York published this year. He was the official artist for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland and soccer World Cup games in France.

"With his art, what you see is what you get," said Alexander Lieventhal, an executive at Art 28 GmbH & Co. in Stuttgart, Germany, which manages and sells Rizzi's work. "Any child can look at it and understand what he's trying to convey: a celebration of life."

Rizzi, a native of Brooklyn, died Monday at his SoHo studio at age 61. He had a heart condition, Lieventhal said.

Rizzi studied art at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where his groundbreaking techniques began with three-dimensional constructions that evolved from a youthful failure.

For his classes in painting, printmaking and sculpturing, he had to hand in work for grades in all three subjects. But Rizzi had time to complete only one: a twice-printed etching, with parts of one cut out and mounted on top of the other using wire.

Lieventhal described it as a "combination of print and sculpture that produces the 3-D effect."

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