In 1983, animator and film director Ralph Bakshi, famous for his work on the animated features Fritz the Cat (1972), Wizards (1977), and The Lord of the Rings (1978), invited Frank Frazetta to collaborate with him on the film Fire and Ice (1983). His striking paintings of Conan, Tarzan, and John Carter of Mars altered the way readers viewed the characters and influenced other artists and film directors, including George Lucas, who visited Frazetta’s studio in 1978. In 1969, Frazetta painted the memorable cover of the debut issue of Vampirella. However, his 1966 cover of the book Conan the Adventurer propelled Frazetta to stardom.
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The focus of many was on fantasy illustration-in print (paperback book covers, magazines), film posters, animation, role-playing games, and, eventually, video games.įrazetta's illustration of Ringo Starr for Mad magazine in 1964 brought attention to Frazetta’s work, and movie studios hired him to paint film posters. These young artists began to lead the evolution of illustration away from traditional outlets like the newsstand into new arenas.
John, as illustrator of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan and John Carter series, influenced a new generation, which included Frank Frazetta, Jeff Jones, the Brothers Hildebrandt, and Boris Vallejo. In 1952, Frazetta began drawing Al Capp’s popular comic strip Li’l Abner, in addition to working on numerous comic book titles.įollowing the end of the Golden Age of Illustration in the 1920s, a number of artists continued working for the next few decades.
His first work was published in Tally-Ho Comics when he was sixteen. Though largely self-taught, he began taking drawing classes at the Brooklyn Academy of Art at just eight years old. One of the pioneers of modern fantasy illustration, Frank Frazetta, began his career in the dwindling days of the pulp magazine. For that I’m grateful.Home > Artists > Frank Frazetta Frank Frazetta Born: Febru| Died: Biography West, and others-but you were the first to hold my imagination. I love also your spiritual successors- Sam Kieth, James V. As your spirit wings its way toward Barsoom, your gifts remain for us to enjoy. I drank deep of that fantasy, and today I still have its taste on my lips. I was and am fascinated by a physicality that never seemed quite safe, by naked bodies with meat on their bones, by the exotic promise of furious, heroic fighting and equally heroic loving. The male and female sexuality that arrested me at 15 still enthralls me now. The paintings pulse with masculinity, but also exude a powerful femininity there are soft and submissive women, yes, but also dangerous and magnetic ones: huntresses, witches and queens. The illustrations are not mere titillation they are life, writ large. Mighty sinews strain and heave, lithe bodies coil to spring, terrific beasts threaten to leap off the page, exotic beauties seem to stretch catlike as they lounge in opulence. Frazetta’s people are always moving and doing, or smoldering with life even at leisure. I believe, as I mentioned, that it’s the energy-the dynamic movement and sheer poetry of muscular bodies in action. What was it about Frazetta’s drawings and paintings that transcends mere immature wish-fulfillment wankery? But I’ve since grown to regard them with boredom or even disgust-Xanth novels, Image Comics artists, and Baywatch all invoke nothing but shame or contempt. There are many other artifacts of my adolescence that held a similar place in my developing, frankly hormonal imagination. There was a taste of the forbidden about them, a lusty frankness that seemed at once both indulgently naughty and beautifully pure. And Frazetta’s illustrations held me captivated, with their intense athletic energy and lurid visions of a sensuality I could almost feel and smell. The tales fascinated me with their hot-blooded adventurism, unnerving, surreal dreamscapes, and high-flown sexuality. I first encountered his work as a teenager when I checked Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter novels out from my local library. As with many famous personages who pass on, I didn’t know him but my imagination owes him a great debt. Fantasy painter and illustrator Frank Frazetta died this week, at age 82.
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