Like most struggling artists, Harry Bertschmann is hoping to be discovered. Unlike them, he already has a pedigree: he has shown his work alongside Mark Rothko, Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell while they were still alive and in their prime. In 1958, a large Bertschmann canvas was featured in the Carnegie International exhibition in Pittsburgh, a rarefied achievement for any artist, let alone one in his mid-20s. Since then, Mr. Bertschmann has painted or drawn nearly every day of his adult life, producing a body of work that has been praised by some of the art world’s foremost tastemakers. Yet he has remained virtually unknown.

“I had to make money,” Mr. Bertschmann, 86, said one morning in late November as he sat at the dining table of his light-filled, art-filled apartment-studio near the South Street Seaport. And he did, working as a freelance graphic designer creating logos, packaging and advertising for brands like Pond’s cold cream and Bufferin. His success at his day job ensured that he wasn’t hungry, and while he has produced thousands (he has no idea how many thousands) of fine-art paintings, drawings and collages in wildly varied styles, he never persistently sought gallery representation.

“Harry’s never been a salesman,” said Mary Bertschmann, his wife of more than 50 years. “He didn’t get his art out there for them to see.” Nor did he carouse with his more exhibitionistic contemporaries at Cedar Tavern, participate in splashy happenings or attract art-world gossip. “Also, we had started our own small press, and Harry was doing great designs for Harper & Row, like this wonderful thing,” she said, pointing to a fetchingly illustrated poetry anthology published in the 1970s. “ We were so into our world, plus, of course, with a child.”

Over the years there were some exhibitions and acquisitions, notably a 140-work retrospective in 1997 of both his commercial and fine art in Basel, Switzerland, where Mr. Bertschmann was born and raised. But these accomplishments never amounted to a self-sustaining fine art career. As he reached his 80s, humility and obscurity started getting old, and costly.