William “Pud” Lane

The Music Sheet Illustrations of William “Pud” Lane

Born in New York in the early 1900s, William “Pud” Lane was an American illustrator, cartoonist, graphic artist, and advertising executive who was active during the late 1920s through the 1950s. Best known for his Jazz Age music sheet cover illustrations, he was a foundational figure in slide-film animation and early commercial television. Lane worked as a freelance cartoonist and commercial graphic artist in New York City during the late 1920s and early 1930s. He became one of the prominent designers of illustrated sheet music covers for songs that captured the exuberant mood of the Jazz Era.

In the early 1940s, New York City began a transitional era in which the spirit of the Jazz Era and the economic worries of the 1930s Great Depression gradually transformed it into a energetic wartime commercial city. The 1940s also marked the permanent demise of elaborately illustrated sheet music covers. These custom illustrated covers virtually disappeared by the mid-1940s and were replaced with standardized typography, promotional photographs, and basic geometric graphics.

After finishing his career of doing freelance cartooning and illustration in New York, William “Pud” Lane transitioned into the growing industry of commercial animation. By the late 1940s, he was working at Transfilm Inc, a prominent New York City-based film production company that was primarily known for their educational short films, promotional films for industries, sponsored travelogues and early television commercials, both animated and live-action.

Lane served as Vice President in charge of the Slide-film division of Transfilm, Inc. which was headquartered on 45th Street in Manhattan, New York. During a major corporate restructure, he oversaw that division’s corporate slide-films, filmographs, and specialized multi-media accounts. After the corporate merger of Transfilm and Caravel Films by the Buckeye Corporation, Lane became an executive and shareholder of the newly formed Visualscope, Inc, an expanding New York media and communications firm established in 1964.

During William “Pud” Lane’s position at Transfilm, the 1947 short color documentary travelogue “Southern Highlanders” was produced for the Ford Motor Company’s advertising program “Americans at Home”. Lane is credited with creating the character concept and design of the Nestle Company’s trademark “Quick Bunny” which introduced the company’s chocolate milk powder to the public. Debuting on widespread television commercials in 1973, the character, who is known as “Quicky”, became one of the most recognizable advertising mascots in advertising history.

Notes: There is, unfortunately, very little information online on Wiilliam “Pud” Lane outside of what is in this article. If anyone has additional information on Lane, please feel free to contact me through the comment window at the end of the article. If the comment section is not visible, it will appear if you click on the article’s title.

In essence, slide-film animation is an animation technique in which an animator draws sequential frames of an action such as a person walking. Each frame is cut out and mounted into individual plastic or cardboard frames. These are then loaded into a carousel slide projector. When quickly advanced through the tray, the sequential projection creates an illusion of motion. In modern digital media, this process refers to replicating the appearance of a vintage camera film strip rolling across a screen.

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Top Insert Image: Pud Lane, “I’m Nuts About Mutts”, 1933, Music Sheet Cover, Mort Dixon and Harry Woods

Second Insert Image: Pud Lane, “Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder”, 1929, Sheet Music Cover, Lewis & Young and Harry Warren

Bottom Insert Image: Pud Lane, “As Long As It’s You Dear, O.K.”, 1929, Sheet Music Cover, Edgar Leslie and Walter Donaldson

Ricardo Bessa

The Artwork of Ricardo Bessa

Born in the central regional city of Viseu in 1983, Ricardo Bessa is a Portuguese Manga-style illustrator whose work depicts unique subjects and distinctive color combinations. Using both digital and hand-drawn elements, he creates illustrations that straddle the line between fantasy and reality.

After a personal exploration of digital art work in his teenage years, Bessa studied Art and Multimedia at the Faculdade de Belas-Artes da Universidade de Lisboa where he earned his Bachelor of Arts in 2010. He continued his studies at London’s Kingston University where he achieved his Master of Arts in Illustration in 2011. Bessa worked in several Design and Art Direction positions before committing to a career as an independent illustrator in 2012.

Both an illustrator and storyboard artist, Ricardo Bessa specializes in sharply-edged, detailed figures and dynamic perspectives. His work draws inspiration from his Portuguese upbringing, the natural world, comics, mythology, and a variety of queer art. Bessa’s character studies and challenging narratives appeal to a wide range of audiences. His work can be found in advertising projects, textbooks, comics, young-adult book covers, and many digital projects.

Among Bessa’s many clients have been the Oxford University Press, Puffin Books, Bloomsbury Publishing, HBO, Macmillan Publishing, Sony, Penguin Random House, Wired, The Atlantic, and Wizards of the Coast. He has worked for such properties as “Game of Thrones”, “Dungeons & Dragons”, “Magic: The Gathering”, “Power Rangers” and “Lumberjanes”. Bessa also did illustrative work for advertising animations to promote the second series of “The End of the F***ing World”, produced and animated by Picnic Studio. In 2015, Bessa curated “Heróica”, a superhero fanzine created by twenty-one Portuguese illustrators; he was also one of the curators for “Burl & Fur”, a 2016 magazine tribute to the bara manga genre.

Ricardo Ressa has exhibited his work in such English venues as the September 2024 Pride Comic Art Festival (PrideCAF) in the city center of Bristol; the October 2024 MCM (Movies, Comics, Media) Comic Con in London; the November 2024 Thought Bubble in Harrogate; and 2025 MegaCon Live, an annual pop culture and fandom convention at London’s ExCel exhibition center.

Based in London, Bessa is represented by the Folio Illustration and Animation Agency. His site and listed social links can be found at: https://www.ricardobessa.com

Notes: A 2020 YouTube video presented through Nicer Tuesdays’s live event website highlighted a presentation of Ricardo Bessa who discussed his illustrative work for season two of “The End of the F***ing World”. This video can be found under the name: Nicer Tuesdays: Ricardo Bessa.

Top Insert Image: Ricardo Bessa, “Self Portrait”, Digital Color Print

Second Insert Image: Ricardo Bessa, “Coming Home, Part 3”, January 2018, Illustration for May Healing’s short story “Coming Home”, Woman’s Weekly Magazine

Bottom Insert Image: Ricardo Bessa, Editorial Illustration for “Sky at Night: A Window on the Universe”, British Broadcasting Company

Dani Torrent

The Artwork of Dani Torrent

Born in Barcelona in 1974, Dani Torrent is an award-winning Spanish artist, illustrator, and writer. In addition to his creative illustrations for media outlets and advertising, he is recognized for his work in the field of both young adult and children’s literature.

Torrent earned his degree in Art History at the University of Barcelona; he also finished his doctoral courses in Fine Arts at the same university. Torrent followed these studies with Film Direction at Barcelona’s Centre d’Estudis Cinematogràfics de Catalunya and master studies in Illustration at the Escola de la Llotja, the oldest art and design school in Spain. Through his knowledge of art history, he draws inspiration from such contemporary and master artists as Henri Matisse, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Utagawa Hiroshige, David Hockney and Caspar Friedrich.

Dani Torrent’s artistic style has developed over the years to one that is more gestural and expressive. For works on paper, he utilizes pencils, pastels, gouache and watercolors; acrylic paints are his choice for works on canvases. As a visual artist, Torrent has exhibited his illustrations and paintings at solo exhibitions in the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, United States, and multiple Spanish cities including Madrid, Barcelona, Girona and Huelva.

Proficient in multiple mediums, Torrent has focused his talent in the field of illustration, a genre that enables him to integrate the visual narrative principles of cinema with his knowledge of art history. Shaped by a deeply personal perspective, Torrent’s illustrative work examines commonplace experiences as well as intimate relationships. Within his children and young adult books, he avoids stereotypes and examines complex themes that include the passage of time, death, and the understanding that melancholy can be an inherent part of happiness.

Dani Torrent was awarded the Golden Apple at the 2023 Biennial of Illustration Bratislava, the most prestigious international exhibition for children’s book illustrators, and the 2025 Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators of New York. He was awarded the 2026 World Illustration Award for his book “One Day, Two Weeks, Three Months…” and the 2022 Cuatro Gatos Foundation Award for Best Young Adult Books in Spanish in the United States. Torrent was also awarded the Hiiibrand Illustration Award in China, the Merit Diploma from the 2022 Bologna Children’s Book Fair in Italy, the Young Creators Award from the Fita Foundation, and the Museari Award granted by the Museu de l’Imaginari, a cultural museum institution focused on queer art and history.

Beginning with his first picture book in 2011, Torrent has written and and illustrated multiple children and young adult books. Among those books he has illustrated are “Folktales for Fearless Girls: The Stories We Were Never Told” (2020), “Cartas a un Joven Poeta (Letters to a Young Poet)” (2025),“Goodnight Whispers” (2018), “Dad: The Man, the Myth, the Legend” (2021), “Viaje al Pueblo de las Treinta Señoritas (A Trip to the Village of the Thirty Young Ladies)” (2019), and “Tami, el Maquinista (Tami, the Train Engineer)” (2024), among others. Torrent’s 2025 “One Day, Two Weeks, Three Months…”, which was centered on intimate moments in gay relationships, has won the most prestigious recognition in the world of illustration.

Focused on his career in illustration, Dani Torrent’s upcoming exhibitions include a February show at the Jaco Moretti Gallery in Palm Springs, California, and a summer exhibition at the Boxxx Gallery in Amsterdam.

Notes: Dani Torrent’s illustrations, paintings and drawings, as well as available works for purchase, can be found at: https://danitorrent.com/

Second Insert Image: Dani Torrent, Illustration for “Los Cuentos que Nunca nos Contaron”, October 2018, Publisher Nube de Tinta

Third Insert Image: Dani Torrent, Illustration for “Viajes en Trenes de Primera Clase”, May 2022, Publisher Triqueta Verde

Bottom Insert Image: Dani Torrent, Illustration for “Viatge al Poble de les Trenta Senyorete”, November 2019, Publisher Editorial Comanegra

NASA Mars Recruitment Posters

NASA Mars Recruitment Posters for Explorers: Art by NASA

Born in Chicago, Illinois in September of 1875, Edgar Rice Burroughs was an American writer of adventure, fantasy and science fiction series. He was the fourth son of Civil War veteran Major George Tyler Burroughs and Mary Evaline Zieger , both of whom were from Warren, Massachusetts.

Edgar Rice Burroughs is best known for the twenty-four books of the “Tarzan” series and the eleven-volume Barsoom series with the early sci-fi hero John Carter, a Civil War veteran from Virginia who becomes a warrior on the planet Mars. Created in 1911, the character of Carter has appeared in short stories, novels, comic books, television shows and films, most notably Andrew Stanton’s 2012 feature film “John Carter”, that marked the 101st anniversary of John Carter’s first published appearance.

Burroughs’s first novel of the Barsoom/Carter series, “Under the Moons of Mars”, was written between July and September of 1911; it was serialized in Frank Munsey’s monthly pulp magazine “The All Story” from February to July in 1913. After the publishing success of Burroughs’s “Tarzan” series, “Under the Moons of Mars” was published as a hardcover edition in October of 1917 by A.C. McClurg & Company under the title “A Princess of Mars”.

John Carter was the lead character in Burroughs’s first novel of the Barsoom series. He featured most prominently in five of the following volumes: “The Gods of Mars”, “The Warlord of Mars”, ‘The Swords of Mars”, “Llana of Gathol”, and “John Carter of Mars” published in 1964, fourteen years after Burroughs’s death. As a secondary character, Carter appeared in the fourth volume “Thuvia, Maid of Mars” and the ninth volume “Synthetic Men of Mars’. A volume, entitled “John Carter of Mars: Gods of the Forgotten” by sci fi author Geary Gravel, was released by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. in September of 2021.

Homages to Burroughs’s character John Carter and his world of Mars have appeared in works by such science fiction writers as Alan Moore, Robert A. Heinlein, Charles Stross, Philip José Farmer, and Harry Turtledove. In 2020, Altus Press released an authorized “Tarzan”novel entitled “Tarzan: Conqueror of Mars” written by Will Murray. In the novel, Tarzan finds himself marooned on Barsoom and seeks John Carter’s help to return home.

Edmund Dulac

The Illustrative Work of Edmund Dulac

Born at the southern French city of Toulouse in October of 1882, Edmund Dulac was a French British-naturalized illustrator of books and magazines as well as designer of banknotes and stamps. Best known as an illustrator of gift books and children’s books, he was one of the illustrators who worked during the Golden Age of Illustration, that period from 1875 to 1920 which marked an upsurge in the quality of illustrated books.

Born the only child of Pierre Henri Aristide Dulac and Marie Catherine Pauline Rieu, Edmund Dulac grew up in a comfortable bourgeois household and was educated at the Lycée de Toulouse. By the age of sixteen, he was creating professional art nouveau work. Dulac studied law at the University of Toulouse for two years before enrolling at the École des Beaux Arts in 1900. While at school, he roomed with his close friend and fellow student Émile Rixens, who became a painter of landscapes and historical scenes.

In 1903, Dulac was awarded a scholarship to the Académie Julien in Paris where he studied for a short period. An impulsive marriage in December of 1903 to Alice May de Marini, an American thirteen years his senior, quickly dissolved. By 1904, he had left for England to pursue his artistic career. Dulac was immediately successful and joined both the London Sketch Club and the St. John’s Art Club. Settled in London’s Holland Park, he received his first commission: illustrations for an edition of Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” and nine other volumes of work by the Brontë sisters to be published by J. M. Dent & Company.

Edmund Dulac’s career flourished between 1890 and 1920, a period when British book illustration was unrivaled. Through his connections with the London Sketch Club, he began associations with London’s Leicester Gallery and publisher Hodder & Stoughton. The gallery commissioned illustrations which they sold at an annual exhibition; publishing rights for reproducing Dulac’s illustrations in yearly gift books were handled by Hodder & Stoughton. Through this partnership, Dulac illustrated multiple editions, which included “Stories from the Arabian Nights”, Shakespeare’s “Tempest”, “Sleeping Beauty and Other Fairy Tales”, “The Serpent Prince”, and “Ali Baba and Other Stories”.

Dulac also collaborated with his friends, impresario Sir Thomas Beecham and dramatist William Butler Yeats, on various theater productions. In 1920, he composed music for Yeat’s production of “At the Hawk’s Well”. Dulac, along with Yeats and Ezra Pound, staged Japanese Nō productions for which he designed costumes and stage sets as well as music compositions. The hardships of World War I, however, were still intensely felt in England by 1920; policy decisions and an economic depression made the publishing of elaborately illustrated book editions a rarity.

Though concerned about his income, Edmund Dulac managed on what he earned from portraits and frequent commissions by the Hearst newspaper chain for “American Weekly” cover illustrations. He widened the scope of his work to newspaper caricatures, theater costume and set designs, medals, banknotes and postage stamps. Among these stamp series were issues to celebrate King George VI’s coronation and the 1948 Summer Olympics in London.

By World War II, Dulac had become the leading authority on postage stamp design. To fulfill Charles de Gaulle’s request for a stamp to unite France’s colonies against Germany, he designed a series of stamps depicting the Cross of Lorraine, a sixteenth-century heraldic cross that soon became a symbol of Free France. For his final wartime work, Dulac designed a Victory stamp series, the 1944 “Marianne de Londres”. He used the widow, Léa Rixens, of his college friend Émile Rixens as the model for Marianne, the national personification of the French Republic since the French Revolution.

Dulac lived in London with British author and translator Helen Beauclerk from 1924 until his death. He illustrated two of her novels, “The Green Lacquer Pavilion” (1926) and “The Love of the Foolish Angel” (1929); she, in turn, often posed as the model for some of Dulac’s illustrations. At the close of his career, Dulac returned to illustrating children’s books with the same perfection that had characterized his earlier works. His final commission was for an edition of Milton’s “The Masque of Comus”. Halfway through this project, Edmund Dulac died from his third heart attack on the twenty-fifth of May in 1953 at the age of seventy.

Notes: A collection of Edmund Dulac’s papers, correspondence and musical compositions is house at the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas at Austin.

A prolific illustrator, Edmund Dulac illustrated dozens of books, some of which required twenty to forty images. The Art Passions website discusses twenty of Dulac’s best known illustrative projects with images from each: https://www.artpassions.net/dulac/dulac.html

A more extensive study of the illustrators in the Golden Age of Illustration can be found in the Illustration History section of the Norman Rockwell Museum: https://www.illustrationhistory.org/essays/childrens-book-illustrators-in-the-golden-age-of-illustration

Top Insert Image: Howard Coster, “Edmund Dulac”, 1938, Half-Plate Film Negative Print, National Portrait Gallery, London

Second Insert Image: Edmund Dulac, “Caricature of John Singer Sargent in His Studio”, Date Unknown, Watercolor and Ink on Paper, 62.2 x 52.1 cm, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Edmund Dulac, Design for a Rug, Date Unknown, Pencil and Gouache on Paper, 12.5 x 9 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Edmund Dulac, “Inspector James Pryde S.C.”, 1915, Pencil, Pen and Ink, Watercolor and Bodycolor on Artist’s Board, 29.6 x 27.5 cm, Private Collection

Jean Giraud

Jean Giraud. Illustrations for “The Eyes of the Cat”, 1978, Graphic Novel,

Born at Nogent-sur-Marne in May of 1938, Jean Giraud, known as Moebius, was a French artist, writer, and cartoonist who worked in the Franco-Belgian “bandes dessinées” tradition. These “drawn or strip stories” have been a long tradition in Belgium and France that, starting in 1945, became a major style on the comic scene. Among the most popular “bandes dessinées” are “Herge’s “The Adventures of Tintin”, Andre Franquin’s “Gaston”, and Pierre (Peyo) Guilford’s “Smurf”.

The only child of insurance agents Raymond Giraud and Pauline Vinchon, Jean Giraud was raised by his grandparents after his parents’ divorce. Introverted with health issues, he found both escape and comfort in Fontenay-sous-Bois’s small theater where he watched its many American Western B-movies. In his formative years at the Saint-Nicolas boarding school, Giraud began drawing Western-themed comics and became acquainted with the Belgian comics, “Tintin” and the weekly comic magazine “Spirou”.

At college, Giraud became a lifelong friend of future comic artist Jean-Claude Mézières, creator of the sci-fi comic series “Valérian and Laureline”. His first freelance commercial success was a 1956 series of humorous Western comic shorts, “Frank of Jeremie”, for the “Far West” magazine published by Mireille. Giraud continued to publish comics, both Western and French historical, for a variety of magazines. During this period, his style was heavily influenced by Belgium comic artist Joseph “Jijé’ Gillain, whose work was regularly published by Fleurus Presse in Paris. Through Fleurus, Giraud published his first three illustrated books.

Jean Giraud’s most famous works include the “Blueberry” series, a collaboration with writer Jean-Michel Charlier, that featured one of the first anti-heroes in Western comics. Under the pseudonym Moebius, he created surreal, almost abstract-styled fantasy and sci-fi comics. Among these was the series of short graphic stories, “Arzach”, that followed a silent warrior who rode a pterodactyl creature. As a designer and storyboard artist, Giraud constributed to such adventure and sci-fi films as “Alien” (1979), “Tron” (1982), “The Abyss” (1989), and “The Fifth Element” (1997). His designs for Ridley Scott’s “Alien”, the attire of the Nostromo’s crew and particularly their spacesuits, appeared on screen exactly as designed.

The 1978 “The Eyes of the Cat” was Giraud’s first collaboration with the filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, who became a close friend and co-author. The portfolio-sized, 56-plate book was never meant for widespread distribution. It was printed in a limited edition of five hundred copies as an internal thank you gift for friends and clients of French comic publisher Les Humanoides Associes. Due to popular demand, it was reprinted on bright yellow paper in 2013 as a hardcover edition entitled “The Eyes of the Cat: The Yellow Edition”. In 2021, the story was reissued as a softcover by publisher Humanoids, Inc.

“The Eyes of the Cat” tells the text-free story of a cat who is attacked by an eagle as it wanders through a decaying city in the future. Told through a series of twelve by sixteen inch (30.5 x 40.6 cm) detailed black and white lithographic illustrations, the tale is both gritty and violent. The mood of the story was influenced by Alejandro Jodorowsky’s association with the Panic Movement, a surrealistic collective he founded in 1962. The movement concentrated on chaotic and surreal performance art; it often staged shocking events designed as a response to the mainstream acceptance of surrealism.

Note: A short August 2020 article on “The Eyes of the Cat”, written by Ben Herman, can be found at the “1st Comics News” site: https://www.firstcomicsnews.com/comic-book-cats-number-33-the-eyes-of-the-cat/

A more extensive March 2012 biography of Jean “Moebius” Giraud, written by Kim Thompson, can be found at “The Comics Journal” website: https://www.tcj.com/jean-moebius-giraud-1938-2012/

Lambiek Comiclopedia, an excellent source for information on all comic illustration, has a biography of Jean Giraud with illustrations on its site: https://www.lambiek.net/artists/g/giraud.htm

Top Insert Image; Photographer Unknown, “Jean Giraud”, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Jean Giraud, “Les Réparateurs”, Illustration for “Le Monde d’Edena (The Aedena Cycle) #6”, 1988-1994, Marvel/Epic Comics

Bottom Insert Image: Nicolas Guérin, “Jean Giraud (Moebius)”, Date Unknown, Gelatin Silver Print

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Wilfried Sätty

The Collages of Wilfried Sätty

Born at Bremen in April of 1939, Wilfried Sätty, birth name Wilfried Podriech, was a German graphic artist who became known for his assemblages, black and white collage art, and lithographs. After the end of World War II, Sätty’s early life took place within the surreal landscape of Bremen’s heavily-bombed ruins.

In the mid-1950s, Wilfried Sätty entered into a three-year apprenticeship as a mechanical engineer. After his training, he worked as an engineer in the construction of Brasilia, a modern, planned city development in Brazil to replace Rio de Janeiro as the nation’s capital. Sätty relocated in 1961 to San Francisco, California where he settled in North Beach’s artistic bohemian community and worked as a draftsman for the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. Inspired by the creativity of the city’s psychedelic sub-culture, Sätty began in 1966 to create pictorial collages; some of these were sold as poster prints.

After establishing a studio on San Francisco’s Powell Strret, Sätty created the first of his assemblage installations, “The North Beach U-Boat”, a warren of rooms containing mirrors, dolls, oriental carpets, and other discarded material found in the trash bins of wealthy residents. During the 1970s, he created animations, colored artwork, lithographic prints, and hundreds of black and white collages. These collages were well-received and were used as illustrations in both establishment periodicals and counter-culture publications.

Poster artists accepted Wilfried Sätty as a peer due to his designs for rock concert advertisements. However, his work was rooted in the more somber and utopian German Surrealism, an art expression that he accented with bits of the bizarre and grotesque. Generally excluded from gallery exhibitions, Sätty turned to publishing his work. Using printing presses to multiply and overprint his collages, he published two volumes of collages; the first of which was “The Cosmic Bicycle”, a collection of seventy-nine collages published in 1971 through “Rolling Stone” magazine’s imprint Straight Arrow Books. Sätty’s second volume from Straight Arrow Books was the 1973 “Time Zone”, a collection of collages in the form of a wordless novel akin to the collage books of Max Ernst.

Sätty created illustrations for the 1976 “The Annotated Dracula” which contained an introduction, notes and bibliography by Romanian-American author and poet Leonard Wolf. He also created eighty black and white illustrations for Crown Publishing Group’s 1976 “The Illustrated Edgar Allan Poe”, a collection of Poe’s horror and literary short stories. Sätty is, however, perhaps best known for his commissioned work for Terence McKenna’s anthology book “The Archaic Revival”, published in May of 1992 by Harper Collins. This collection of essays, interviews and narrative adventures is illustrated through Sätty’s black and white collages depicting themes of ancient cultures seen through modern technology, optical art, and sacred religious architecture.

Beginning in the late 1970s, Wilfred Sätty’s work drew inspiration from the dramatic and often unruly events in the history of San Francisco; these collages cover the period from the 1848 Gold Rush to the 1890s. Sätty died in January of 1982, at the age of forty-two, from an accidental fall from a ladder at his Powell Street home. His final work, “Visions of Frisco: An Imaginative Depiction of San Francisco during the Gold Rush & the Barbary Coast Era”, was published posthumously in 2007 by art historian Walter Medeiros.

Notes: The Wilfried Sätty website is located at: https://satty.art/#top

The online “FoundSF”, a San Francisco digital history archive, has an article on Wilfried Sätty and his “North Beach U-Boat” project: https://www.foundsf.org/Satty_and_the_%22North_Beach_U-Boat%22

“Melt”, an archive of esoteric and contemporary culture, has an article on Wilfried Sätty that includes a biography as well as several images of his artwork: https://visualmelt.com/Wilfried-Satty

San Francisco artist and educator Ryan Medeiros has an article on Wilfried Sätty entitled “Wilfried Sätty; The Psychedelic Alchemist of Collage” on his website: https://ryanmedeiros.substack.com/p/wilfried-satty-the-psychedelic-alchemist

On John Coulthart’s “(feuilleton)” website, there is an article entitled “Wilfried Sätty and the Cosmic Bicycle” that examines Sätty’s life and the publishing of his 1971 book of collages: https://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2025/09/10/wilfried-satty-and-the-cosmic-bicycle/

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Wilfried Sätty”, circa 1960-1970s, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Wilfried Sätty, “Listen, Sweet Dreams”, 1967, Lithographic Psychedelic Poster, 88 x 59 cm, Orbit Graphic Arts, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Wilfried Sätty, “Stone Garden”, circa 1960s, Lithographic Psychedelic Poster, 88 x 58 cm, Printed at East Totem West, California, Private Collection

Hal Foster

The Artwork of Hal Foster

Born in August of 1892 at Nova Scotia’s capital city of Halifax, Harold “Hal” Rudolph Foster was a Canadian-American comic strip artist and writer noted for his attention to detail and high level of draftsmanship. He was the first to adapt American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs’s 1912 “Tarzan of the Apes” into the comic format. Hal Foster is, however, best known for “Prince Valiant”, his own Arthurian epic adventure to which he devoted over three decades of his life.

In 1906 at the age of fourteen, Foster relocated with his family to Winnipeg, the provincial capital of Manitoba, to recoup their finances through a land boom. Although this relocation ended his formal education, Foster was inspired by such artists as Howard Pyle, Arthur Rackham and N. C. Wyeth to study drawing. At the age of seventeen, he became employed as an illustrator for the Hudson’s Bay Company’s catalogue and as staff artist for the Brigdens Limited advertising firm. After his marriage to Helen Wells, Foster and his wife relocated in 1915 to the wilderness areas of Ontario and Manitoba where they worked on a goldfield claim at Lake Rice and as hunting guides for several years.

Hal Foster, still interested in art and feeling pressure to support his family, relocated to Chicago in 1919 to seek employment and study art. After obtaining a position at the Jahn & Ollier Engraving Company, he audited evening classes at the Chicago Art Institute which was followed by night classes at the National Academy of Design and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. Now in his thirties, Foster began independent work in 1925 with the Chicago advertising studio Palenske-Young as a cover and ad illustrator for Popular Mechanics, Jekle Margarine, Northwest Paper, Wurlitzer Grand Pianos, and both the Southern Pacific and Illinois Pacific Railroads.

Since 1912, “Tarzan of the Apes” by Edgar Rice Burroughs had been appearing as a serial novel in the pulp “All-Story Magazine” published by Frank Munsey. In 1927, Joseph Neebe of the Campbell-Ewald advertising agency wanted to adapt “Tarzan” as a ten-week comic strip series. After novel illustrator J. Allen St. John declined the position, Neebe hired Foster as the strip’s illustrator. The “Tarzan” comic series appeared in newspapers through syndication with the Metropolitan Newspaper Service, later part of the United Feature Syndicate until the end of its run. “Tarzan” appeared first in November of 1928 as a series in the British weekly “Tid-Bits”; it was introduced in the newspapers of Canada and the United States in January of 1929.

Hal Foster’s “Tarzan” strip employed the text comic format, the oldest form of comics and one dominant in European comics since the nineteenth-century. Text comics presented the story through captions, written in the same style as a novel, either below or within the panel. Between September 27th of 1931 and May 2nd of 1937, Foster drew all the Sunday episodes of “Tarzan” while artist Rex Maxon worked on the daily episodes. Although Foster turned the strip into an epic adventure tale, he became increasingly disappointed with the script quality and began development on his own series.

Launched by the King Features Syndicate of the Hearst media empire, Foster’s “Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur”, was inspired by the legends of King Arthur and Knights of the Round Table. The series premiered on the 13th of February in 1937 as a color comic in the Saturday tabloid papers. “Prince Valiant” became a full-page Sunday feature four months later; the comic series was changed to a half-page format in 1971. Due to the large-scale format, Foster was able to produce varied layouts and highly detailed scenes of outdoor life and epic fighting. He designed “Prince Valiant” in the same format as his “Tarzan” series, a text comic with descriptions and dialogues as paneled captions..

Hal Foster’s epic sage followed the life of the son of the deposed King Aguar of Thule, Prince Valiant, who left his home in the wild fens of Britain to become a knight. Foster gradually refrained from the comic strip’s early fantasy elements and developed his characters into more real-life heroes. His “Prince Valiant” was rather unique at the time as an important core element of the narrative was Valiant’s domestic life. Through the course of the decades-long story, Foster’s characters age, an uncommon occurrence in epic hero-centered comics. Prince Valiant marries Aleta, Queen of the Misty Isles, and the marriage results in five offspring. In 1947, Foster became the first artist to depict a pregnant woman in a United States comic strip.

Using historical research, Foster gave “Prince Valiant” a strong sense of realism by drawing accurate depictions of medieval attire, castles, countries and weaponry. His characters were multi-dimensional and presented with subtle emotions as well as different attitudes to good and evil. Staying several weeks ahead of schedule, Foster would work over fifty hours a week to maintain the quality of artwork on single page. In addition to the “Prince Valiant” strip, he also executed other projects including an 1943 comic adaptation of Frank Werfel’s “Song of Bernadette” and “The Mediaeval Castle”, a three-panel strip that ran from April 1944 to December 1945.

Beginning in 1950, Hal Foster began working with assistants which included his son Arthur James and Hugh Donnel doing the coloring . He continued writing the story script and drawing the comic strip until the early 1970s when arthritis began to affect his drawing ability. The final page drawn and signed by Hal Foster appeared on the 16th of May in 1971, thirty-four years after its initial printing. He continued to write and design the layouts for “Prince Valiant” until the February 10th episode in 1980. Harold “Hal” Rudolph Foster passed away in Spring Hill, Florida on the 25th of July in 1982 at the age of eighty-nine.

One of the most widely praised comic artists of all time, Hal Foster was awarded the 1957 Ruben Award by the National Cartoonists Society, the Special Features Award in 1966 and 1967, as well as the 1978 Elzie Segar Award given to those who made a unique and outstanding contribution to the profession of cartooning. Foster was inducted posthumously into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1996, the Joe Shuster Canadian Comic Book Creators Hall of Fame in 2005, and the Society of Illustrators’ Hall of Fame in 2006.

Notes: Contributing editor Felix James Miller wrote an excellent article on Hal Foster and the “Prince Valiant”comic strip for The European Conservative: https://europeanconservative.com/articles/reviews/the-9th-art-hal-fosters-prince-valiant-king-arthur-and-the-adventure-of-life/

Founded in 1968 by Kees Kousemaker, Lambiek in Central Amsterdam is the world’s oldest comic shop with an impressive collection of comics and art from all parts of the world. Its online site is located at: https://www.lambiek.net/infomenu/about-lambiek.html

Kees Kousemaker’s “Lambiek Comiclopedia is an extensive artist compendium that contains hundreds of biographies on comic artists as well as an art history article on comic books. Hal Foster’s biographical page is located at: https://www.lambiek.net/artists/f/foster_hal.htm

Bill & Sue-On Hillman’s “ERBzine” is an official Edgar Rice Burroughs Tribute and Weekly Webzine Site that was founded in 1996. It contains over 15,000 webzines and webpages in archive form. The site’s Hal Foster section has photographs and biography, as well as archived Sunday page issues of “Tarzan” from 1931 to 1937 and “Prince Valiant” from 1937 to 1940. The Hal Foster section is located at: https://www.erbzine.com/mag55/5570.html

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Hal Foster Drawing Prince Valiant”, 1937-1971, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Hal Foster, “Tarzan”, Episode 237-Mutiny, “The Vikings”, 22 September 1935, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Hal Foster, “Tarzan”, Episode 103-Darts of Death, 26 February 1933, Pen and Ink on Board, Private Collection

Fourth Insert Image: Hal Foster, “Tarzan”, Episode 103-Darts of Death, 26 February 1933, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Hal Foster Drawing Tarzan”, circa 1928-1937, Gelatin Silver Print

Bernardino del Boca

The Artwork of Bernardino del Boca

Born in the Piedmont commune of Crodo in August of 1919, Bernardino del Boca was an Italian painter, illustrator, and educator. Although best known for his book illustrations, he co-founded the publisher “L’età dell’Acquario (The Age of Aquarius)” and was the director of and contributor to its journal of the same name. Del Boca’s artwork had a crucial impact on the New Age and Theosophical movements in Italy during the 1970s.

Bernardino del Boca was the son of Giacomo del Boca and Rosa Silvestri, parents of noble lineage who owned the Fonte Rossa mountain springs and spa in Crodo. He was introduced to Spiritualism and Theosophy at an early age by a related princess of the noble Hungarian Esterházy family who took him on several trips throughout Europe. While in the French city of Nice, del Boca met Princess Djavidan Hanem of Egypt who suggested he keep a journal. His early spiritual and genealogical interests combined with his writings became a crucial component of his future artistic production.

In 1921, del Boca and his family moved to Novara where he received his initial education. Although skilled in drawing, he did not excel in other subjects. In 1932, del Boca was given the opportunity to enter the Institut le Rosey, a renowned international boarding school in Lausanne, Switzerland. At the school, he became became friends with roommates Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who later became Shah of Iran, and Ananda Mahidol, the future monarch of Siam (Thailand).

In June of 1935, Bernardino del Boca enrolled at the Brera Art High School in Milan, an extension of the Accademia della Belle Arti di Brera whose teachers taught at both locations. Among his teachers were figurative painter and printmaker Felice Casorati and modernist Neoclassical painter Achille Funi. Del Boca graduated in 1939 and, in the same year, had his first solo exhibition. Two years later, he held an exhibition in Domodossola and was a participant at the Thirteenth Exposition of Figurative Arts of the Fascist Unions held in Turin.

Called into military duty during the Second World War, del Boca served in Verona and later in Florence. He left Italy in 1946 and relocated in Siam (Thailand) where he lived first in Singapore and then Bangkok as a portraitist. Returning to Singapore in 1947, he worked as an architect and interior designer. In October of that year, del Boca received his second Buddhist initiation at the Temple of Han on the Linga Archipelago’s island of Nawa Sangga. In a collaboration with artist Robin A. Kilroy, he held an exhibition in September of 1948 at the Queen Victoria Memorial in Penang. “Nightly Face”, del Boca’s first novel was published in 1948; his second novel “Nawa Sangga” was published in the following year.

After holding the position of honorary consul in Singapore, Bernardino del Boca returned to Italy in 1949. Two years later, he took part in a collective exhibition at the Broletto di Novara, a medieval architectural structure in the city’s center. Del Boca returned to teaching while continuing to paint, write and lecture. He became the president of the theosophical group “Besant-Arundal”, a position del Boca held for forty years. After serving as a member of Italy’s National Institute for Geographic Research and Cartographic Studies, del Boca published a university-level anthropology manual for students entitled “Sotia dell’Antropologia” in 1964.

Del Boca, in a collaboration with Theosophist and publisher Edoardo Bresci, founded the journal “L’Età dell’Acquario- Rivista Sperimentale del Nuovo Piano di Coscienza (The Age of Aquarius- Experimental Journal of the New Plane of Consciousness)” in 1970. During the next seven years, he would publish four more works including the 1971 “La Dimensione Umana (The Human Dimension)” and “La Quarta Dimensione (The Fourth Dimension)” in 1977. After his retirement from teaching in 1978, del Boca relocated to Piedmont.

During the 1980s, Bernardino del Boca attempted to create a series of Aquarian communities he called Villaggi Verde, or Green Villages. In 1986, he relocated to the first and only village that was completed, the Villaggi Verde of San Germano di Cavallirio. In addition to publishing two more works, “Il Servizio” and “Un Paese de Amare”, del Boca organized collective trips to southern and eastern Asia, gave lectures, edited and contributed to “L’Età dell’Acquario”, and organized conferences.

After living a productive life as a Theosophist, anthropology scholar, illustrator and painter as well as an advocate for sexual liberation, Bernardino del Boca died on the ninth of December in 2001 at the age of eighty-two in the hospital at Borgomanero, Novara. His artistic production was, for the most part, neglected until the 1960s when the “visionary” aspect of his art was analyzed for the first time. During his lifetime, del Boca rarely exhibited his work. Only through a series of recent publications, conferences, and posthumous exhibitions, particularly those held at the Foundation Bernardino del Boca in 2015 and 2017, have del Boca’s artworks been thoroughly studied and promoted.

Notes: Author and researcher Elisa Rolle has an article about Bernardino del Boca on her Queer Places website that examines his work as a pioneer of the sexual and homosexual liberation movement in Italy. The article also discusses his book“Long Night in Singapore” that won the 1951 Gastaldi National Award but caused a scandal: http://www.elisarolle.com/queerplaces/a-b-ce/Bernardino%20del%20Boca.html

A more extensive biographical article on Bernardino del Boca that delves more deeply into the theosophical aspects of his art can be found on the World Religions and Spirituality Project site: https://wrldrels.org/2021/05/20/bernardino-del-boca/

The Fondazione Bernardino del Boca site is located at: https://www.fondazionebernardinodelboca.it

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Bernardino del Boca with Cat”, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Inset Image: Bernardino del Boca,, “La Quatro Dimensione, L’Evoluzione della Coscienza”, Original Publication 1977, , L’Età dell’Acquario 1995 Edition

Third Insert Image: Bernardino del Boca, “Sviatovida”, circa 1970, Fondazione Bernardino del Boca

Fourth Insert Image: Bernardino del Baco, “La Dimensione Umana”, Original Publication 1975, New Edition by Fondazione Bernardino del Boca

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Bernardino del Boca”, Gelatin Silver Print

Bernard Perlin

Artwork by Bernard Perlin

Born in Richmond, Virginia in November of 1918, Bernard Perlin was an American painter and illustrator who was primarily known for his Magic Realism paintings and World War II posters supporting the American effort. He was the youngest child of Jewish immigrants from Russia and began his art studies at the encouragement of his high school teacher.

Perlin enrolled in the New York School of Design where he studied from 1934 to 1936. He enrolled in 1937 at the National Academy of Design and studied under painter and lithographer Leon Kroll. Perlin continued his studies at the Arts Student League under painter and graphic artist Isabel Bishop, mural painter William Palmer, and painter and printmaker Harry Sternberg. In 1938, he was awarded a Kosciuko Foundation Award which enabled him to continue his studies in Poland.

At the beginning of World War II, Bernard Perlin was rejected from military combat service as he was openly gay. However, he entered the graphics department of the Office of War Information for which he created patriotic propaganda posters to support the country’s war effort. Among his many wartime pieces are the 1943 “Let ‘Em Have It” war bonds advertisement and “Americans Will Always Fight for Liberty”, which depicted World War II marching with Continental Army soldiers from the American Revolutionary War.

Perlin continued his war effort as an artist-correspondent for Life Magazine from 1943 to 1944. While stationed in Greece for Life Magazine, Perlin went to the United States the first news and sketches from that country since the German invasion in 1941. At the war’s end in 1945, he began illustrative work at Fortune Magazine, a national business magazine with in-depth articles.

Bernard Perlin, influenced by the magic-realism movement, sought after the war to capture in his paintings everyday-life moments. His most famous work, “Orthodox Boys”, was painted in 1948. This painting depicted two Jewish boys standing in front of subway graffiti. Perlin’s 1945-1946 “The Leg”, a casein and tempera work on board, was the first postwar work by an American artist to be acquired by the Tate Museum in London.

Perlin moved to Italy for six years, where he produced magic-realist works done with a more brightly colored palette. After a brief stay in New York City, Perlin moved to Ridgefield, Connecticut, where he continued to paint until the 1970s. After several years of retirement, he began to paint again in 2012. After the completion of two new works, Perlin was given a retrospective of his work in 2013 at the Chair and the Maiden Gallery on Christopher Street in New York City.

Bernard Perlin met Edward Newell, a top fashion model in the 1950s and later the 1960s, at a 1954 New Year’s Eve party hosted by photographer George Platt Lynes. Their relationship that began in the summer of 1955 lasted for over fifty years until Perlin’s death. Newell and Perlin were married after it became legal in the state of Connecticut in 2008.

Bernard Perlin died at the age of ninety-five in January of 2014 at his home in Ridgefield, Connecticutt. His work can be found in museums and libraries, including the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Pritzker Military Museum and Library in Chicago.

Note: I have done research on Edward Newell without any success. I know that he was in Connecticut after Perlin’s death. If anyone has any information on Newell, please notify me through the comment section. Thank you.

Top Insert Image: George Platt Lynes, “Bernard Perlin”, 1940 Gelatin Silver Print, Private Collection

Second Insert Image: Bernard Perlin, “His Home Over There”, circa 1942, YMCA/YWCA Poster, 69.5 x 102.5 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Bernard Perlin, “Let ‘Em Have It”, 1943, World War II Poster for War Bonds, 51 x 71 cm, Private Collection

Hans Erni

The Artwork of Hans Erni

Born at the city of Lucerne in February of 1909, Hans Erni was a Swiss engraver, graphic designer, illustrator, painter and sculptor. He is best known for his Swiss postage stamp illustrations, lithographs for the Swiss Red Cross, and medal designs for the Swiss government and the International Olympic Committee.

The third of eight children born into a working-class family, Hans Erni attended the local Lucerne elementary school before entering an apprenticeship as a surveyor. Beginning at the age of fifteen, he apprenticed for three years as a draftsman until his entrance into the Lucerne School of Arts and Crafts in 1927. Erni continued his studies at the Académie Julian in Paris and Berlin’s School of Applied Arts under Swiss art historian Heinrich Wölfflin.

Between 1930 and 1933, Erni alternated stays in Lucerne and Paris where he became acquainted with contemporary French painting and influenced by the works of Spanish artist Pablo Picasso and Cubist painter Georges Braque. Through the Abstraction-Création group in Paris, Erni became acquainted with artists Jean Arp, Alexander Calder, Constantin Brancusi, Wassily Kandinsky, and Piet Mondrian. During the early 1930s, he participated in several collective exhibitions and painted fresco murals in city of Lucerne.

After his travels to Belgium, Italy and England, Hans Erni began in 1936 to explore Abstraction with his first public mural commissions. This series of murals included frescoes for Lucerne’s General Building Cooperative, Switzerland’s section at the 1936 Triennale in Milan, and two educational murals entitled “Saline” and “Wasserkraftwerk (Hydroelectric Power Station)”. In 1937, Erni co-founded the Allianz, an association of Swiss abstract artists that advocated, with an additional emphasis on color, the concrete art theoriesof Swiss painter and designer Max Bill. Advancing the concept of Abstraction, Concrete Artists fully realized the idea that a painting could represent even an intangible algebraic formula rather than a person or an object.

Erni had his first major public success in 1939 with a mural, entitled “Switzerland: Vacation Land of the People”, that was specifically commissioned and displayed for the Zürich National Exhibition. In 1940, Erni entered into the Swiss Army where he served, until his discharge in 1945, as a camouflage painter due to his painting skills. In 1948, Erni presented his work in the painting competitions at the Summer Olympics held in London; he also participated between 1950 and 1952 in several Latin American exhibitions.

After a period of painting in Guinea and Mauritania, Hans Erni, along with Swiss graphic artists and illustrators Kurt Werth, Celestino Piatti, Alfred Pauletto and Hugo Wetli, organized a 1960 graphic design and painting exhibition in the Solothum canton city of Olten. He also exhibited his graphic design work in the 1964 Documenta Exhibition in the central German city of Kassel. Erni often employed allegories and figures, both contemporary and from Greek mythology. in his work. His symbolic Realist images presented large, powerful forms constructed with lines of a high degree of precision.

Erni created many works in the 1970s and 1980s among which were a tapestry “People, Viticulture and Fishing” for the cit of Küsnacht; a concrete relief mural “Primal Nature and the Work of Man” for the Téléverbier Valley Station in Médram, France; a mural “Man’s Advance into Space” for the Aerospace Hall of the Swiss Museum of Transport; and an aluminum relief “The Human Flight” for the United Nations building of the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal. Erni also created a thirty-meter long mural “Panta Rhei” for the auditorium of Lucerne’s Hans Erni Museum which was founded on his seventieth birthday in 1979.

In his career, Hans Erni designed twenty-eight high-relief medals as well as one official Commemorative coin for the Swiss Confederation. In recognition for his Olympic medal designs, he received the 1989 Sport Artist of the Year award from the United States Sports Academy, a private university offering masters and doctoral degrees in sport education. Erni designed ceramics, theatrical sets and costumes, illustrations for Swiss postage stamps, and art for Swiss bank notes in the 1940s. Although the bank notes were printed, they were never released due to unfounded political objections by a member of the Lucerne State Council.

Beginning in 1989, retrospective exhibitions of Erni’s work were held in various cities. Two retrospectives were held in Japan, the first at the Himeji City Museum of Art and the second at the Itami City Museum of Art. In 1990, a retrospective was held at the Seibu Museum of Art in Funabashi, Japan, and at India’s Nehru Center in Bombay, now Mumbai. In 1995, Erni was guest of honor at the XI Biennial of International Sports and Arts in Madrid; Queen Sofia of Spain opened the exhibition and presented Erni with the Medal of Honor for his life’s work.

In addition to his paintings and sculptures, Hans Erni created illustrations for approximately two hundred published books and images for ninety Swiss postage stamps. He continued to create work throughout his later years. Among his last works were a 2011 medal entitled “Forest is Life” for the United Nations International Year of Forests and the 2012 stained glass windows for the Protestant Church in Martigny, Switzerland. Hans Erni died at the age of one hundred and six in Lucerne on the twenty-first of March in 2015.

The Hans Erni Museum, a detached hexagonal building, is part of the Swiss Museum of Transport complex in Lucerne. It houses an extensive collection of Erni’s work and provides insights into a life engaged with historical, cultural, technical and ecological themes. A public assemblage of Hans Erni’s work from private collections can be viewed at The Open Hans Erni Collection site located at: https://www.hans-erni-collection.org/en/

Notes: The online RTS magazine has ten short video documentaries (French language) in its Culture et Arts section at: https://www.rts.ch/archives/dossiers/3477775-hans-erni-un-artiste-emblematique-de-la-suisse.html

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Hans Erni”, circa late 1950s, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Hans Erni, “Drei Freunde (Three Friends)”, 1970, Watercolor and Ink on Paper, 28 x 40 cm, Private Collection, Australia

Third Insert Image: Hans Erni, “Dames des Décans- Pisces”, 1970, Lithograph on Arches Paper, Artist Edition, 50 x 65 cm, Private Collection, Switzerland

Fourth Insert Image: Hans Erni, “Badende”, 1960, Lithograph, 35 of 150 Edition, 47.7 x 39.7 cm, 1993 Catalogue “Hans Erni-Stiftung, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Franco Tettamanti, “Hans Erni, Lucerne”, Date Unknown, Gelatin Silver Print, Collection of Artist

John Eric Broaddus

The Artwork of John Eric Broaddus

Born in New York in 1943, John Eric Broaddus was an artist who worked in several mediums including painting, illustration, and performance art. He was one of the prominent figures of the New York City art scene throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

John Eric Broaddus was one of the most creative and innovative artist to approach the book form. He was a pioneer in the field before the book, as a physical art piece, became an accepted genre of the contemporary art world. Not concerned with the integration of text and image, Broaddus used the pages of books as scaffolds for his colored, cut-out visual esthetic effects. His work is different from other book artists as his creations are unique, not limited editions or multiples.

Broaddus’s 1979 “Meridian Passage” is a volume of hand painted pages in acrylic, tempera, watercolor and ink combined with abstract cut-outs. This volume is in the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Legion of Honor. Broaddus’s 1982 “Xylocaine” was a volume whose pages were altered with acrylic, ink, glitter, tempera and watercolor and then overlaid with cut-out xeroxes. “Xylocaine” was the first artist book purchased by Robert and Ruth Sackner, prominent collectors who had previously focused on collecting only works of concrete and visual poetry.

John Eric Broaddus’s 1983 “France I” was constructed from a found geographical codex of over a hundred pages that was altered with paint, ink, colored pencil, glitter and sculptural cuttings. Through the use of clever cutting, a photograph of children would appear on the other side of the leaf as a gigantic statue within a dark blue abstraction. For his two-volume 1985 “Above the Trees”, Broaddus used two identical books with spray-painted pages on which were added stuck-on images, drawings and intricately cut-out shapes. This work’s elaborate, vividly-colored and highly sculptural pages demonstrated his interest in both detail and drama.

Broaddus was known for his theatrical scene sets, among which were those for the Provincetown Playhouse’s 1988 production of Justin Ross and John Epperson’s “I Could Go on Lip-Synching”. However, he was better known for the highly original costumes, constructed of found objects, that he wore for his art performance work. Broaddus would appear in his costumes on the streets of New York and in such iconic places as Studio 54 and Xenon, two of the city’s most famous nightclubs. In November of 1974, he made an appearance in a white oriental costume, carrying a bamboo umbrella, at avant-garde artist Charlotte Moorman’s 11th Avant-Garde Festival held at Shea Stadium in the New York borough of Queens.

A vibrant and pioneering artist who contributed to the artistic history of New York City, John Eric Broaddus died from AIDS at the age of forty-seven in 1990. His artwork is housed in many private collections and the world’s major art institutions including London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, Spain’s National Library in Madrid, and the Seibu Museum in Tokyo, among others.

A limited edition artist book, entitled “Spin 1/2 : Books, Paintings and Memorabilia by John Eric Broaddus” was published in conjunction with the 1990 exhibition of his work at the Center for Book Arts on 27th Street in Manhattan. In addition to its multi-colored silkscreen illustrations, a forward introduction was written by Jan van der Wateren, the Keeper and Chief Librarian of the National Art Library at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.

The award-winning short documentary “Books of Survival: The Art of John Eric Broaddus” was produced and directed by Gabriella Mirabelli under a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Released in 2000 with screenings worldwide, the film reconstructs the artist’s life through intimate interviews with close friends, family and collectors of his art.

Notes: A collection of John Eric Broaddus’s papers, reviews of his work, interviews, symposium records, and memorabilia are housed in the ArchivesSpace at the University of Iowa. Correspondence and artist greeting cards are contained in the Archival and Manuscript collection of Northwestern University’s McCormick Library.

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “John Eric Boarddus”, Date Unknown, Gelatin Silver Print, Estate of John Eric Boarddus

Second Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “John Eric Boarddus in Costume”, Date Unknown, Gelatin Silver Print, Estate of John Eric Boarddus

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “John Eric Broaddus, 11th Avant-Garde Festival, Queens, New York”, 1974, Color Print, Mixed Media Performance Documentation, Estate of John Eric Broaddus

Yashima Gakutei

Yashima Gakutei, “Carp Ascending a Waterfall”, 1892 (Edo Period), Surimono, Woodblock Print with ink and Color on Paper, 18.8 x 21.6 cm, Private Collection

Born in the Honshu city of Osaka circa 1786, Yashima Gakutei (八島岳亭) was a Japanese poet and artist known for the quality of his woodblock prints and his artistic contribution to Ukiyo-e (浮世絵) a traditional poetic art form that flourished from the seventeenth to the nineteenth-century. Among the images depicted in ukiyo-e woodblock prints and paintings were landscapes, wrestlers and kabuki actors, dancers and courtesans, folk tales and historic scenes, and images of an erotic nature.

Gakutei was the illegitimate son of the samurai Hirata under the Tokugawa shogunate established by Tokugawa Ieyasu (徳川家康), one of the three Great Unifiers of Japan during the Edo period. Gakutei’s mother later married into the Yashima clan, thus granting him the name of Yashima Gakutei. He received his art training from master ukiyo-e printmakers Totya Hokkei (魚屋北渓) and Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾北斎) who, though best known for his woodblock print series “Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, worked in multiple mediums including book illustration.

After his training, Yashima Gakutei settled at Osaka in the 1830s. He was known for his technical precision, his embossing skill, and his specialization in the traditional surimono art form, which some critics say surpassed that of his teacher Totya Hokkei. These surimono (摺物) woodblock prints were deluxe editions privately commissioned by poetry societies and wealthy patrons of the arts for special occasions, poetry competitions, and the celebration of the New Year. Gakutei employed lavish printing techniques on the finest homemade papers with generous use of gold, silver, bronze, and mica highlights, as well as embossing and lacquer-like effects.

During his career, Gakutei also created images of landscapes and seascapes for books, a rarity among those artists who had studied under Hokusai. He received a commission to provide all the illustrations for the “Kyōka Suikoden (狂歌水滸伝)”, a volume of traditional Japanese poetry. Among Gakutei’s other works are a series of five surimono woodblock prints that featured young female musicians performing gagaku (雅楽), the traditional imperial court music from the Heian period (794 to 1185); a series of embossed woodblock prints depicting all the gods of fortune as beautiful women, or bijin (美人); and a privately issued and embossed surimono tetraptych entitled “The Ascent to Heaven”, a four-panel scene depicting the well known Japanese fairy story “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter”.

As a poet, Yashima Gakutei wrote and illustrated many humorous poems in the kyōka (狂歌) style, a genre of Japanese tanka poetry that was prevalent in the Edo region, now the area of modern Tokyo. Formed within the tanka meter of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables per line, these short poems placed mundane or vulgar humor within elegant, poetic settings. Wordplay and puns were often used; a classic styled poem would often be given a vulgar twist at the end.

As a translator, Gakutei is known for his translation of the sixteenth-century Chinese novel “Journey to the West (西遊記)”, one of the Classic Chinese Novels that is attributed to Ming dynasty poet and novelist Wu Cheng’en (吳承恩). This account of the legendary pilgrimage of Tang dynasty Buddhist monk Xuanzang was illustrated with woodblock prints created by Gakutei.

Yashima Gakutei died in 1868, the same year as the Meiji Restoration that replaced the Tokugawa shogunate military government with a reinstallation of Emperor Meiji under a constitutional monarchy, thus ending Japan’s Edo period.

Notes: Many of the details of Yashima Gakutei’s life are shrouded in mystery. The Art Institute of Chicago indicates that he was known by several names including Yashima Harunobu, Horikawa Tarô, and Gakutei Kyûzan, among others. The Ronin Gallery, the largest collection of Japanese prints in the United States, lists his birthplace as Edo under the name of Harunobu Sugawara. For my article, I am relying on information from the Bates College Museum of Art in Lewiston, Maine, which lists his birthplace as Osaka.

Top Insert Image: Yashima Gakutei, “Hotei”, circa 1927, “Allusions to the Seven Lucky Gods”, Woodblock Print with Karazuri Printing and Metallic Pigment, 21 x 18.4 cm, Ronin Gallery

Second Insert Image: Yashima Gakutei, “Muneyuki Shoots a Tiger”, circa 1829, Woodblock Print Surimono, 21 x 18.4 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Yashima Gakutei, “Furuichi Dance”, circa 1822, Woodblock Print with Ink and Color, Embossing and Metallic Pigments, 21 x 19 cm, Private Collection

Howard Tangye

Portraits by Howard Tangye

Born in 1948 in Queensland, Howard Tangye is an Australian illustrator, portraitist, and educator who has been an influential force in fashion design for decades. A figurative abstract artist, he is best known for his portraits executed in a mixture of oils, watercolors, pastels, inks and graphite.

Howard Tangye studied at London’s Saint Martins School of Art where he earned his Bachelor of Arts in Fashion and Textiles in 1974. He continued his studies at New York’s Parsons School of Art where he received in 1976 his postgraduate degree in Drawing. For seventeen years, Tangye was head of BA Fashion Design: Womenswear at Central Saint Martins where he taught such noted fashion designers as Wes Gordon, Stella McCartney, Christopher Kane, Zac Posen, and Hussein Chalayan.

Over the course of his teaching career, Tangye developed a distinctly characteristic art practice that employs decisive fine lines and the bold use of richly layered materials. His extensive study of the subtleties manifested in the human form provides the basis for rendering his subject’s intrinsic nature. Although Tangye’s work bears similarities to that of Egon Schiele, Tangye’s line-work has an intriguing lyrical nature in contrast to the raw intensity of Schiele’s expressionist lines.

Although a fashion tutor with an extensive knowledge of textiles and textures, Howard Tangye does not define himself as a fashion illustrator. What he finds most interesting is drawing the sitter, not the clothes worn. Tangye draws those with whom he has developed a connection. Because of this, his vibrant works offer the viewer an insight into the sitter’s mind and personality. Tangye will often, in the same work, depict the sitter three or four times, each image slightly altered or shifted in position. Previous depictions of the sitter are not removed but drawn over. This practice of leaving alterations visible in the finished work is known in Italian as pentimenti, or repentance.

Tangye has been exhibited his work in many group and solo shows. From 1991 to 2001, he regularly exhibited at the charity auction at the Royal College of Art for St. Christopher’s Children’s Hospice. He has exhibited at the Lethaby Gallery of Central Saint Martins; Galerie Dessers in Leuven, Belgium; the John Soane Museum and the Amar Gallery in London; and the 2020 Armory Show in New York, among others. In 2013, the Victoria and Albert Museum selected fifty-six of Howard Tangye’s original works for their permanent collection. In 2014, London’s Hus Gallery hosted a solo exhibition, entitled “Casting the Line”, that contained twenty-five works created by Tangye created over a span of twenty years.

In addition to private collections and the Victoria and Albert Museum, Howard Tangye has work in London’s National Portrait Gallery and in the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of Harvard University at Cambridge, Massachusetts. His 2013 art book “Within” was released through a Kickstarter campaign and was completely sold out within a year. A second edition was released, with some small design changes, in 2020 through the publisher “Stinsensqueeze.

Howard Tangye’s website is located at: https://howardtangye.com

Top Insert Image: Adam Rogers, “Howard Tangye”, 2023, Photo Shoot for Water Journal, Volume 5°, London, United Kingdom

Second Insert Image: Howard Tangye, “In the Garden There Was a Lemon Tree”, 2018, Mixed Media on Bockingford Paper, 153 x 122 cm

Bottom Insert Image: Howard Tangye, “Mike (Writing at the Studio Table)”, 1988-1989, Mixed Media on Pergamenata Paper, 100 x 70 cm

Alfred Kubin

The Artwork of Alfred Kubin

Alfred Leopold Isidor Kubin was born in Litoměřice of the Czech Republic, formerly Leitmeritz of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in April of 1877. An important representative of Symbolism and Expressionism, he was an Austrian printmaker, illustrator and author known for his dark, spectral and symbolic fantasies, often assembled into a series of thematic drawings.

In 1892, Alfred Kubin began a four-year apprenticeship under landscape photographer and painter Alois Beer. After attempting suicide on his mother’s grave in 1896, he served one year in the Austrian Army before his release due to a mental breakdown. In 1898, Kubin studied at the atelier of German naturalist painter Ludwig Schmitt- Reutte which was followed by a short period of study at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts.

During his studies, Kubin became acquainted with the works of such Symbolist artists as Odilon Redon, Henry de Groux and Félicien Rops as well as the works of painter Edvard Munch and printmaker Max Klinger. His early works, mainly ink and wash drawings of fantastical or macabre subjects, were influenced by the aquatint techniques of Klinger and Francisco de Goya. Between 1902 and 1910, Kubin produced a small amount of oil paintings; however, his oeuvre consists mainly of watercolors, pen and ink drawings, and lithographs.

Beginning in 1906 until his death, Alfred Kubin lived a withdrawn life at Schloss Zwickledt, the manor house of an eleventh-century estate in northern Austria near the German border. He was joined by his wife, translator Hedwig Kubin, the sister of noted German writer Oscar Schmitz, until her death in 1948. By 1911, Kubin had exhibited his work at Berlin’s Galerie Paul Cassirer and at both Vienna and Berlin Secessionist exhibitions. He was also associated with the Blaue Reiter group, a loose confederacy founded by Wassily Kardinsky and Franz Marc for Expressionist artists’ exhibitions and publication activities. Kubin showed his work at the 1913 Blaue Reiter exhibition in Berlin that was sponsored by the German avant-garde art and literary magazine “Der Strum”.

Kubin became well established professionally by the 1920s. Represented by Otto Kallir’s Neue Gallery in Vienna, he worked as a printmaker and book illustrator with such major German dealers as Hans Goltz, J. B. Neumann and Frita Gurlitt. Kubin created illustrations for works by American author Edgar Allan Poe, Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, and German fantasy author Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffman, among others. He also supplied illustrations for the German fantasy magazine “Der Orchideengarten”. Founded in 1919 by freelance writers Karl Hans Strobl and Alfons von Czibulka, “The Orchid Garden” is considered the first fantasy magazine.

Alfred Kubin worked on a series of illustrations intended for Austrian novelist Gustav Meyrink’s upcoming novel “The Golem”. However due to an extended printing delay, Kubin used the completed illustrations for his only literary work, the 1908 “Die Andere Seite (The Other Side)”, a fantasy novel set in an oppressive society. These illustrations introduced a more realistic style, executed with intense pen strokes and sometimes heightened with watercolor, that would characterize his work for the remainder of his career.

Due to his isolation at Schloss Zwickledt, Kubin was able to live through the German Reich’s war years relatively undisturbed. He was able to exhibit some of his work; however, there was little demand for his drawings during the war years. In 1941, Otto Kallir’s Galerie St. Etienne in New York City held Kubin’s first American solo exhibition and would regularly exhibit his work after that show. Once the war had ended, Austria honored him with a retrospective in Vienna and later awarded him the Grand Austrian State Prize for Visual Arts in 1950.

Hailed as a national treasure by Austria, Alfred Kubin was given a section for his work, known as the Kubin Kabinett, at the prestigious Neue Galerie in the city of Linz. He was awarded the Austrian Medal for Science and Art in 1957. A member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, Alfred Kubin died at his Zwickledt home in August of 1959 at the age of eighty-two.

Notes: The Kallir Research Institute, a nonprofit foundation, was established to expand upon the scholarship of art dealer and historian Otto Kallir. Primarily focused on Austrian and German expressionists, the Institute also specializes on artists who were sponsored by Otto Kallir. On its site, there is a short biography of Alfred Kubin and links to his work: https://kallirresearch.org/bio-alfred-kubin/

Top Insert Image: Nicola Perscheid, “Alfred Leopold Isidor Kubin”, 1898, Vintage Print

Second Insert Image: Alfred Kubin, “Prähistorische Büffel (Prehistoric Buffalo)”, circa 1907, Gouache and Tempera on Kataster Paper, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Alfred Kubin, “Prähistorische Vögel (Prehistoric Bird)”, circa 1906-07, Tempera on Kataster Paper, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Eric Schaal, “Portrait of Alfred Kubin”, 1958, Gelatin Silver Print, 9.4 x 7.4 cm, Private Collection