german illustration 5

MARTIN GUHL illustrated several of the adult novel-series in the german magazine STERN throughout the seventies. unfortunately there is no information about him, maybe someone can help me. following a few of his illustrations I collected over the years in my cut-out archives.

© martin guhl / gruner + jahr

anton pieck

in 1895 ANTON PIECK was born in a small village in the netherlands. most of his life he was a professor, teaching children how to draw. in 1987 he died at the age of 92. his paintings are very well known in holland, he is, after all, one of the founders and designers of the fairy theme park DE EFTELING, a dutch kind of disneyland. when I worked on the comic strip series ALFRED J.KWAK I was introduced to pieck’s work through one of our dutch partners. first I thought I was looking at GUSTAF TENGGREN art. but after looking closer I found out that he has his very personal style, portraying the very typical, charming dutch way of life. here is a very small selection of his artwork.

© anton pieck

pans

the longer recreated pans below are from two disney shorts and one from MGM, all beautifully painted in the traditional watercolor- technique.

FARMYARD SYMPHONY, 1938 disney silly symphony

TUGBOAT MICKEY, 1940 disney mickey mouse short

YANKEE DOODLE MOUSE, 1943 MGM tom+jerry short

© disney enterprises, inc
© MGM

wilhelm m.busch 2

WILHELM M.BUSCH illustrated in the sixties the novel MANON LESCAUT written by ABBE PREVOST. following is a small selection of the masterful black/white drawings.

© wilhelm m.busch / bertelsmann publ.

zagreb style 6

the OSCAR-nominated animated short SATIEMANIA was produced in 1978 by ZDENKO GASPAROVIC for ZAGREB film. the comically violent film is based on the piano music of ERIC SATIE, it is a satirical portrait of the city-jungle with its excesses, the brothels and bars. following are some captured moments.

© zagreb film / zdenko gasparovic

maritime 1

MONTAGUE DAWSON is probably the best known sea painter of the twentieth century. he was born 1895 in chiswick, one of the suburbs of london. early his family moved to southampton, where dawson spent his time fishing, sailing and watching the great ships of the world anchoring in the harbor. his grandfather was HENRY DAWSON, a very successful landscape artist in his time. the grandson seemed to be destined to become a painter early on, he always knew how to draw and to use color. though he never went to art school, he took every opportunity of looking at paintings and absorbing the methods of the masters. after WW1 dawson became a professional painter and illustrator and was already in 1930 established among the leading marine painters, with increasingly important commissions, like from the royal family and the american presidential collections. dawson was extremely industrious often working seven days a week. his fame grew to such an extent that his wife and daughter spent much of their time shielding him from an admiring public. he would take upto three weeks to complete one picture and would not start a new one until the current one was finished. dawson’s controlled and quick brushwork gives life to his paintings, and the incredible attention to nautical details is stunning. as he said about his paintings – you really are there, you can hear the sea. montague dawson died in 1973, he was a master of his genre, the like of which we may never see again.

© montague dawson

german illustration 4

during the sixties and seventies I collected as many of the illustrations of DIETER LANGE as I could find. besides the children-stories he illustrated the adult series in the german magazine STERN as well. from the hundreds of cut-outs I selected a few.

© dieter lange / gruner&jahr

fight

sketches from a shelved CG-animated short I AM, I was developing in 2001 at disney together with UMESH SHUKLA. It was supposed to be about birds, a journey through abstract art of the last century.

© © disney enterprises, inc

malang

as you might know, I live now for the last seven years in manila, philippines. it is a very poor country that is struck by disasters regularly, like the major typhoons and the floodings last year, as well as the recent threat of an erupting volcano. nevertheless filippinos are very creative people, some very well known singers like LEA SALONGA are from here, one of the most famous comic strip artist ALEX NINO grew up here, and a very well known painter lives here and is still creating his beautiful art at over eighty years of age – MAURO ‘MALANG’ SANTOS was born 1928 in santa cruz, manila. he studied fine arts at the university of the philippines and at the otis art institute in L.A. 1947 he started to work as a layout artist at a daily manila newspaper, where he created the first english daily comic strip. he published over the following years several comic strip series. together with six artist friends he set up the first art gallery in manila in 1965. continous exhibitions of his paintings followed in manila and all over the philippines, as well as in london, rome, N.Y., san franzisco, hong kong and bahrain. his paintings are colorful and feature simplified forms, often portraying women in traditional dress with fruits in baskets. I love his work, it is a lot like this very colorful country with its spanish tradition mixed with the asian culture. following are some selected pieces of his art.

© malang

cut out

I am sure most of you know JAN LENICA, or at least have seen an animated film, a poster, a children book, a stamp-design or even the sets and costumes of a theatre-play he designed. JAN LENICA, 1928 – 2001, grew up in warsaw, poland. together with WALERIAN BOROWCZYK he made his first animated film in 1957, a lot more followed. he settled in paris, lectured at harvard university, was the first professor of the animation class at the university of kassel, germany, and professor for poster and graphic arts at the berlin hochschule der kuenste. he said about himself – I have always liked to move at the periphery of art, at the crossing of genres. I have enjoyed combining seemingly distant elements, if not foreign, blurring the borders between adjacent areas. despite the variety of techniques, themes and genres, lenica’s cut out style is quite easy to recognize, and there is always a personal message revolving around the dilemma of human existence. he preferred to use two-dimensional forms, the space flat, no perspective. following are some captured scenes from the 1963 film DIE NASSHOERNER – THE RHINOCEROS, or also known as RHINOCERI, based on a EUGENE IONESCO short story.

© jan lenica

wilhelm m.busch 1

WILHELM MARTIN BUSCH, 1908 -1987, is one of the most important german illustrators of the second half of the 20th century, with a total of over 300 illustrated books. his father, ARNOLD BUSCH, who taught at the breslau art academy, was one of the most famous portrait artists of his time. the father was teaching the son, who decided early on to become a drawing artist. from the very beginning almost perfect already he started to study in 1929 at the berlin academy of art. he had a chance to learn from some well known teachers, and became through working in woodcut interested in book-illustration. in the berlin of the early thirties busch became fast a wanted illustrator for newspapers like ‘gartenlaube’, and started very early to illustrate the classics of literature. during WW2 he was recruited to the ‘psychological war’ troops, dealing with propaganda prints. after the war he moved to hamburg and started to work for ROWOHLT-publishing. his first major assignment were the illustrations for TUCHOLSKY’S – SCHLOSS GRIPSHOLM. all the major writers of german, french and russian literature followed. busch illustrated EMILE ZOLA, CASANOVA’S MEMOIRS, GOETHE, HAUFF’S FAIRYTALES and more. I have about 40 of his illustrated books and – they are MASTERPIECES. already before WW2 busch had started to teach part-time, from 1954 on he became a fulltime teacher at the hamburg textile/fashion school ( later academy for design ), in 1984 he was appointed professor by the hamburg senate. he told his students – you have to SEE, use your eyes, look around yourself, the hand will do the work automatically. or he was more precise while teaching life drawing – stay 90% of the time with your eyes on the model and 10% on the paper! he was teaching until he died in 1987.

for me he is THE ILLUSTRATOR par excellence! he did not need any reference, did not use any photograph nor models. he had images, worlds in his imagination and he was able to draw them on paper in his unique style. just paper, ink and nibs. a true MASTER OF THE ARTS!
there will be a lot of posts with his amazing drawings, from all over the forties, fifties and sixties. very interesting to watch how he changed his drawing style, from pretty realistic to impulsive, the idea more important than the detail.

the illustrations are from the book IM WEITEN REVIER, published by bertelsmann in the fifties.
© wilhelm m.busch / bertelsmann

chinese art 2

again some more illustrations by two chinese master-artists. I apologize that I am not able to give you the names, unfortunately I can’t read the chinese language. maybe someone out there who recognizes the artwork can help.

according to pinoc and Zhiqi the first artist’s name is DI Shaoying and the second one is Shi Dawei. thank you very much for the information…

© DI Shaoying / Shi Dawei

paul julian 8

warner brothers, sept.22, 1951 – release date for the short TWEETY’S S.O.S. directed by FRIZ FRELENG, the beautiful backgrounds painted by PAUL JULIAN. following some captured scenes and recreated BG’s.

© WB

eugene galien-laloue 4

© eugene galien-laloue

classic 4

following are three paintings of three very important painters of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. I tried to analyze their composition in these paintings, that’s what all the colored geometrical lines and shapes are for.

WILLIAM-ADOLPHE BOUGUEREAU, 1825 – 1905, is probably one of the greatest academic painters. comparing him with REMBRANDT it is said that REMBRANDT captured the soul of age, BOUGUEREAU captured the soul of youth. one of the largest body of work ever produced by any artist was created by him. he was arguably the greatest painter of the human figure in all of art history, his figures come to life like no previous artist has ever before or ever since achieved. not that he wasn’t just the best ever at painting human anatomy, more importantly he captured the tender and subtlest nuances of personality and mood. during his later years and the evolving impressionist era critics called him old-fashioned, a competent technician stuck in the past.

ANNE-LOUIS GIRODET DE ROUSSY-TRIOSON, 1767 – 1824, was a french painter and pupil of JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID. as one of the leaders of NEOCLASSICISM he was much admired by the painters of the ROMANTIC MOVEMENT, since he was adding elements of eroticism through his paintings. he is mostly remembered for his precise and clear style and for his paintings of the NAPOLEON family.

JOHN WILLIAM WATERHOUSE, 1848 – 1917, was an english PRE-RAPHAELITE painter, who portrayed the female nude as the ultimate and natural aesthetic. this painting HYLAS AND THE NYMPHS from 1896 brings to life a version of the greek myth, JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS. hylas, a companion of hercules, is seduced by a group of sea-nymphs who eventually drag him into the sea water with them.

© bouguereau / girodet / waterhouse

german illustration 3

FRANZ-WERNER RICHTER-JOHNSEN, 1912 – 1993, was a german painter, graphic- and comic strip-artist. he became well known by the TARO-comic, written by FRITZ RAAB, that was published from 1959 until 1968 in the german magazine STERN. following are some of his illustrations he did for the same magazine from the sixties through the eighties.

© franz-werner richter-johnsen / stern

le criminel

over a year ago I posted some stills from LE CRIMINEL or in original IL CRIMINALE, by italian animator/director GIANLUIGI TOCCAFONDO. he did this five min short in 1993 together with SIMONA MULAZZANI. this time I wanna post new captured images from the film in a much better quality. maybe you remember LA PICCOLA RUSSIA in my article from nov. 2009. it has a lot more information about this italian master-artist.

© gianluigi toccafondo

10-1-10

collectibles

for the major film releases in the fifties and sixties there were always program-brochures and even small booklets you could buy when you saw the film. they usually had some information from behind the scenes and the making of. and sometimes they included some beautiful illustrations. I got quite a collection from those days, it was the only source for more information since there was no internet and no ‘making of’ books. the following illustrations I selected were done by JOSEPH J.SMITH and BOB PEAK.

© MGM / WB

edelmann again

the following illustrations done by HEINZ EDELMANN through the seventies and eighties show how versatile he was. there are 2 doublepages from the magazine TWEN showing designs they were not used in YELLOW SUBMARINE, a few pages from one of his children books KATHRINCHEN, posters for the german tv-station WDR, where he did the layout and typography as well, and illustrations for the magazines SCHULE and FAZ.

© heinz edelmann / FAZ / WDR / schule / twen