Dan Fontes, the Oakland artist best known for his animal murals spanning freeway underpasses, as well as the offbeat sculptures dotting the Emeryville mudflats, died Tuesday after a lengthy battle with cancer. He was 67 years old.
The Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda, where he served as a longtime board member, confirmed the news in an Instagram post this week. Fontes was “responsible for the massive wall art on both sides of our History Room that greets our patrons upon museum entry every day,” the museum wrote, as well as other murals at Musee Mecanique in Fisherman’s Wharf and Free Gold Watch, the arcade in the Haight. “Our deepest condolences go out to Dan’s longtime partner Julie [Lucchesi].”
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In an interview with SFGATE last September, when Fontes described acquiring and unearthing a collection of rare Wonderlite neon sign artwork, he said his career as a muralist traced back over 40 years. Fontes said he painted over 400 murals in the Bay Area, including “Giraphics,” a family of seven giraffes he completed in 1983 after he was inspired by the “jungle-like land tucked under the concrete maze” of I-580. “Animurals,” a series of zebras, emerged the following year…