Tag: illustration

Fritz Kahn

Illustrations of Fritz Kahn

Fritz Kahn was a German physician who published popular science books and is known for his illustrations, which pioneered the art of infographics. Through the use of often startling metaphors, both verbal and visual, Kahn succeeded in making complex principles of nature and technology comprehensible to a person of average education.

Kahn described the human body as the most competent machine in the world; and his work reflects the technical and cultural state of development of Germany during the Wiemer Republic. He himself did not draw well; the illustrations were made by others on his instructions. Kahn established studios for this purpose in Berlin, New York and Copenhagen.

In late 1938, shortly after the Kristallnacht in Germany, Kahn’s books were placed on the list of “damaging and undesirable writing” and in addition his book on sexuality, “Unser Geschlechtsleben”, was banned by the police and all available copies destroyed. Fritz Kahn’s illustrations were returned to public attention in 2009 with the release of Uta and Thilo von Debschitz’s monograph “Fritz Kahn- Man Machine”. The first exhibition of his work was held in 2010 at the Berlin Museum of the Histoy of Medicine.

Christian Schad

Christian Schad, “Sirius”, 1915, Swiss Stone Lithograph

Christian Schad was a painter and printmaker who was preoccupied with Futurism, Cubism, and later, Expressionism. In 1915, Schad, along with his friend Walter Serner, published “Sirius: A Monthly Magazine for Literature and Art,” in Zurich. The magazine was forced to close after only seven issues. Schad designed the advertising posters and a full page woodcut for each issue.

Schad’s works of 1915–1916 show the influence of Cubism and Futurism. During his stay in Italy in the years between 1920 and 1925, he developed a smooth, realistic style that recalls the clarity he admired in the paintings of Rapael. Upon returning to Berlin in 1927 he painted some of the most significant works of the New Objectivity movement.

In 1918 Schad began experimenting with cameraless photographic images inspired by Cubism. This process had been first used, in the years 1834 and 1835, by William Henry Talbot who made cameraless images, that is, prints made by placing objects onto photosensitive paper and then exposing the paper to sunlight. By 1919 Schad was creating photograms from random arrangements of discarded objects he had collected such as torn tickets, receipts and rags. He is probably the first to do so strictly as an art form, preceding Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagyby at least a year or two.

Robert Buratti

Robert Buratti, “The Hierophant”, Date Unknown, Ink and Pen on Paper, 15.7 x 11.8 Inches

This work is part of the Arcana Series by Robert Buratti and was inspired by “The Hierophant” card of the Thoth tarot deck. Buratti’s work is chiefly concerned with the role of the spiritual within contemporary art, and the talismanic and transformational power of the image. Influenced by the approach and experimentation of artists such as James Gleeson, Andre Breton, Aleister Crowley, Paul Gauguin and Pablo Picasso, Buratti’s work seeks a balance between the seen and unseen, the technical and the intuitive.

Murders in the Zoo

Advertising Poster for “Murders in the Zoo”, 1933, Directed by A. Edward Sutherland, Paramount Pictures

“Roars, shrieks, and cackling of the wild animals on the screen at the Paramount yesterday were echoed to an amazing degree by the audience, at times driven to a mild state of hysteria by scenes in ‘Murders in the Zoo’.”         – John Scott, “’Murders in Zoo’ Opens on Screen”, Los Angeles Times, April 3, 1933

François Schuiten

François Schuiten, “L’Ombre d’un Doute (Shadow of a Doubt)”, Lithograph, Edition of 1000

François Schuiten is a Belgian comic book illustrator. During his studies at Saint-Luc Institute in Brussels, he met Claude Renard, who led the comics department at the school, and together created several books.  Schuiten is best known for drawing the series “Les Cites Obscures” (Cities of the Fantastic), an evocation of fantastic, partly imaginary cities that he created with his friend Benoit Peeters from 1983 for the Belgian monthly comics magazine “A Suivre”.

Every story focuses on one city or building, and further explores a world where architects and urbanists are the leading powers and architecture is the driving force behind society. Styles explored int the series include stalinistic and fascist architecture as well as gothic cathedrals.

Enki Bilal

The Artwork of Enki Bilal

Enik Bilal is a French comic book creator, comics artist and film director. At the age of fourteen, he met Rene Goscinny, a French comics editor and writer known for the comic book “Asterix”. With Goscinny’s encouragement Bilal applied his talent to the field of comics. He produced work for Goscinny’s comics magazine “Pilote” in the 1970s.

Enik Bilal is best know for the “Nikopol” trilogy which took more than a decade to complete. He wrote the script and id the artwork. The final chapter “Froid Equateur” was chosen Book of the Year by the magazine “Lire”. The third chapter of his “Quatre?” trilogy, entitled “Rendezvous a Paris” was the fifth best selling comic of 2006.

Henrique Alvim Corrêa

Henrique Alvim Corrêa, “Martian Viewing Drunken Crowd”, 1906, Pencil and Ink, Illustration for H. G. Well’s “War of the Worlds”, Brussels, Belgium

Henrique Alvim Corrêa was a Brazilian artist working in Belgium at the end of the 19th century, specialising in military and science fiction illustration. His best-known work is this illustrated French translation of H G Well’s “War of the Worlds”, for which only 500 copies were produced.

Unfortunately, Corrêa’s tuberculosis killed him four years later in 1910 at the age of thirty-four. His “War of the Worlds” drawings did not bring him fame in his lifetime or after, but his work has been cherished since by a devoted cult following. The original prints remained with the artist’s family until the sale of thirty-one prints were made in 1990.

Battle in the Sky

Artist Unknown, “Severe Battle in the Sky”, The Illustration of the Great European War, Plate 110, Shobido and Company, Tokyo, Japan

The Shobido and Company, a Tokyo printing firm, produced many series of illustrations of World War I battles and maps. Each series was done by a different Japanese artist, and were presented in sets of eight lithographs. These were printed from 1914 through 1918.

Calendar: August 16

A Year: Day to Day Men: 16th of August

Builder of Dams

August 16, 1892, was the birthdate of Canadian-American cartoonist, Harold Foster.

Harold Foster, as a youth, captained a sloop through the Atlantic, and learned to hunt and fish in the wilds surrounding Halifax from his stepfather, cultivating a love for nature that is readily apparent in his art. He left school at an early age. Foster’s career as a professional artist began when he was about eighteen, producing catalog art for the Hudson Bay Company, but before and after that he made his living in the Canadian wilderness as a fur trapper, hunting guide, and gold prospector.

Foster studied at the Chicago Art Institute and other schools and eventually landed a job at an advertising firm that allowed him to move his wife and two sons to the city. But when the Great Depression hit, work slowed to a crawl. Despite his reservations about entering the field of comic strips, when Foster  was given the chance to adapt Edgar Rice Burroughs’s “Tarzan of the Apes”, he took it.

Debuting in 1929, the “Tarzan of the Apes” daily heralded a new age for comic strips. A fine artist to his bones, Foster introduced dynamic action, perfect anatomy and fluid body movement to the comics page. Through his hands, the titular character was imbued with a balance of nobility and visceral barbarity, and Hal Foster’s dramatically-lit chiaroscuro panels, accurate nature drawing, and raucous action ensured that “Tarzan of the Apes” was a hit.

Hal Foster produced hundreds of pages, and continuing to adapt his illustrative approach to cartooning, but he grew tired of the material. If he was going to continue working in a medium he didn’t care for, at minimum he wanted creative control over his output. So Foster began working on a story set in Arthurian England that he intended to span decades. After months of research and planning, he pitched his new story to United Features Syndicate, distributor of “Tarzan”, and they turned him down. He made the same pitch to William Randolph Hearst and was offered an unprecedented portion of ownership.

“Prince Valiant”, debuted in 1937 and quickly became the gold standard of the Sunday cartoons. The story begins with Val as the five-year-old son of a deposed king and follows him to manhood, through battles with ancient monsters and beasts, knighthood with King Arthur in Camelot, fatherhood, and adventures all across myth, history, and the globe. It is epic, swashbuckling, painterly, ornate, endlessly clever, and brilliantly plotted story, and without the intrusion of word balloons to muck up the panels. Every frame of Prince Valiant is like a story unto itself: beautifully designed, and rendered with a precision. In the golden age of the newspaper strip it was considered by many to be the pinnacle of achievement in the medium.

Jack Balas

Three Paintings by Jack Balas, Oil and Enamel on Canvas

Born in Chicago, Jack Balas earned a BFA and MFA in sculpture from Northern Illinois University. He first began painting in the 1980s and was swept away by the western landscape. After college Balas moved to Los Angeles and worked as a cross-country art-shipper, driving a month-on/month-off route between California and New York that took him regularly through Scottsdale and Tucson.

Eventually Jack Balas moved away from sculpture and began making paintings that recreated the narrative feel of maps, annotated with numbers and texts, and brief stories with images inspired by his experiences as an art trucker. Balas began painting in earnest while teaching figure drawing at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Balas’ goal is to create transcendent images that reveal the fictions surrounding great paintings as well as speak to the present with text and mark making. His current work focuses on the depiction of athletic young men, offered as a counterpoint to the unexamined tradition of equating great painting with the female nude. Balas’ men are presented as Everyman, – variable, philosophical, vulnerable, flexible and eager to please.