David Kunzle obituary

David Kunzle’s academic writing encompassed everything from the history of Nicaraguan murals and Vietnamese lacquered panels to Chinese Maoist comics. Photograph: Becca Wilson

My uncle David Kunzle, who has died aged 87, was an art historian known for his writing on the history of the comic strip, but whose work also ranged widely and fluently across many fields, including early modern Dutch and Flemish painting, 19^th-century Swiss, French, German, English and North American graphics, Victorian and Edwardian clothing and fetishism, and 20^th-century protest posters.

In all he wrote, edited, and/or translated 24 books and 150 essays. He also curated a dozen exhibitions that drew upon his fluency in Latin, German, Dutch, Schweizerdeutsch, French, Italian and Spanish.