Biographical Note
Born November 30, 1923, in Highland Park, Illinois, Diana Denny Kalmus completed a BFA (1945) and MFA (1946) at the University of Pennsylvania. Winning two Cresson Scholarships enabled her to study art in Paris, Florence, and Spain. Her study of portraiture led her to try drawing political caricatures. Soon after selling four of her first caricature drawings to the Philadelphia Record, she was hired as a caricaturist for the Washington (DC) Daily News. Eventually joining the staff of the Scripps-Howard Newspaper Alliance, "Denny," as she came to be known professionally, had her drawings published in multiple newspapers, often on the front page, during the 1940s-1950s, and sometimes multiple times. These newspapers included the New York World-Telegram, Washington Daily News, Cleveland Press, Cincinnati Post, Columbus Citizen, San Francisco News, Rocky Mountain News (Denver), Indianapolis Times, Pittsburgh Press, Fort Worth Press, and Knoxville News Sentinel. Denny found considerable success in mainstream American newspapers at a time when women in her profession were rare. The needs of her growing family led her to leave the field in the early 1960s. She joined a printmaking studio in Washington DC, printed artists' editions, and taught. She remained artistically active in the areas of printmaking through the 1980s and continue to paint into the early 2000s. Diana Denny Kalmus died on January 28, 2015 in Mitchellville, Maryland.