Boris Vallejo - master of the fantasy genre

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

In the world of painting, there are creators who do not expect museum recognition and sugary admiration of critics. In a way, Boris Vallejo is an "applied" artist, and his work falls under the broad category of commercialized art. But why is such engagement multiplied by talent bad?

Master of the fantasy genre

In the USA every year and now a huge number of books are published - over 50,000 titles. And every book, according to the laws of the genre - whether it's science fiction, a romance novel or a thriller - must have a thoughtful and attractive dust jacket so that it is better bought. In this regard, Boris Vallejo is a universally recognized master. Which, by the way, even has counterfeit imitators both in America and abroad.

Artist Boris Vallejo

Fantasy is a rather original and popular literary genre all over the world. And in America in the 80s and 90s - especially. Born in Peru in 1941, Boris Vallejo (Valejo, Valeggio - there are different transcriptions of the translation of the name Vallejo) moved to the states in 1964. Already in 1968 it becomes popular,creating a poster for one of the films in the fantasy style. Since then, he has been massively in demand to create covers and announcements, receiving a lot of money for this. Such films of the 90s of the corresponding genre as "Knights on Wheels", "Q", "Queen of the Barbarians", comedies "Vacation", "Vacation in Europe", "Fast Food Crew" did not do without his brush.

Models for paintings

Boris Vallejo is married to a famous American artist. Julia Bell, whose style of paintings largely coincides with the works of the master, is at the same time a model-sitter for many of her husband's works. The paintings are distinguished by a large number of nudity (both female and male), but the spouses do not see anything shameful in this. By the way, for Bell's paintings, Boris also often poses naked. The artist claims in an interview that he simply loves to depict the beautiful and strong bodies of people, that nudity is natural for a person. Why is there a lot of erotica and even sex in the picture? Because without him none of us would exist (as Boris says).

Boris Vallejo. Pictures

Such an abundance of "nudity" and frank conventions - after all, the genre itself is conducive to this - brought the artist wide-ranging fame both in America and abroad. For example, even in the USSR during the years of perestroika, calendars and posters with photocopies of the maestro's paintings began to be sold. But not all art critics took Vallejo positively and seriously. There were also devastating articles claiming that,they say, in such openwork armor, which is drawn in the picture, it is impossible not only to fight, but even to pass through thickets of nettles, for example. Be that as it may, many of the works literally cut into the memory, and after that you remember them repeatedly, but is this an indicator?

Among the most famous works of the artist is one of the first covers he painted: a commission for Burroughs' book I Am a Barbarian, thanks to which Vallejo literally soared to the heights of popularity. And in terms of demand, I got a job in a publishing house for many years to come! As a rule, the master's paintings do not have names, but they depict dragons, warriors, half-naked girls, monsters. A characteristic feature: no matter how fantastic the plot, everything is spelled out very realistically and to the smallest detail (for example, the muscles of the human body or the dragon's head), a kind of fantastic realism!

Dynasty and transfer of skill

By the way, Vallejo is a whole dynasty of contemporary artists. Firstly, Bell, who herself is quite famous in the states. Son Dorian also paints in fantasy style and works at the same time as portraiture. Daughter Maya is an artist-photographer. Stepsons Anthony and David are artists working for galleries in the United States, as well as illustrators for books of the art genre (mainly science fiction and fantasy).