DADDYGRAPH

Qui étais Ed Roth ?
 
Ed "Big Daddy" Roth (March 4, 1932 – April 4, 2001) was an 
artist and cartoonist who created the hot-rod icon Rat Fink and 
other extreme characters. As a custom car builder, Roth was a key
 figure in Southern California's "Kustom Kulture"/Hot-rod 
movement of the 1960s. He grew up in Bell, California, attending 
Bell High School, where his classes included auto shop and art.
Roth is best known for his grotesque caricatures — typified by 
Rat Fink — depicting imaginative, outsized monstrosities driving 
representations of the hot rods he and his contemporaries built. 
He is less well known for his innovative work in turning hot 
rodding from crude backyard engineering where performance was the
 bottom line into a refined artform where aesthetics were equally
 important, breaking new ground with Fibreglass bodywork.
Numerous artists were associated with Roth, including painter 
Robert Williams, Rat Fink Comix artist R.K. Sloane and Steve
 Fiorilla, who illustrated Roth's catalogs.
 
Known as Mr. Gasser to the hot-rodding community, Roth was 
active in the field of counterculture art and hot-rodding his 
entire adult life. At the time of his death in 2001, he was 
working on an innovative hot-rod project involving a compact car
 planned as a radical departure from the dominant "tuner" 
performance modification style.