В мире живописи есть творцы, которые не ждут museum confessions and cloying delights of critics. In some ways, Boris Vallejo is an artist of the “applied” genre, and his works fall under a wide range of categories of commercialized art. But how bad is this engagement multiplied by talent?
Maitre fantasy genre
In the United States every year and now published a huge numberBooks - over 50,000 titles. And each book according to the laws of the genre - whether it be fiction, a love affair or a thriller - should have a thoughtful and attractive dust cover in order to buy it better. In this regard, Boris Vallejo is a generally recognized maitre. Which, by the way, even has counterfeit imitators in America and abroad.
Artist Boris Vallejo
Fantasy - quite original and popular inworldwide literary genre. And in America, the 80-90s - in particular. Born in Peru in 1941, Boris Vallejo (Valeggio, Valeggio - there are different transcriptions of the translation of the name Vallejo) in 1964 moved to the states. Already in 1968 it became popular, creating a poster for one of the films in the style of fantasy. Since then, he has been massively in demand for creating covers and announcements, getting a lot of money for it. Such films of the 90s of the relevant genre, like “Knights on Wheels”, “Q”, “Queen of Barbarians”, comedies “Vacations”, “Vacation in Europe”, “Team fast food”, did not do without his hand.
Models for paintings
Boris Vallejo is married to a famous Americanan artist. Julia Bell, whose style of paintings largely coincides with the work of the master, is at the same time a model for many works of her husband. The paintings are distinguished by a large number of nudes (both female and male), but in this the spouses do not see anything wrong. By the way, for pictures Bell Boris also often poses in the overt form. 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 eroticism in the picture and even sex? Because without him, none of us would exist (so says Boris).
Boris Vallejo. Pictures
Similar abundance of "nudity" and frankthe conventions - after all, the genre itself has this genre - brought the artist widespread fame both in America and abroad. For example, even in the USSR, during the years of perestroika, calendars and posters with photocopies of maestro paintings were 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 are painted in the picture, it is impossible not only to fight, but even to pass through the thickets of nettle, for example. Be that as it may, many of the works literally bump into the memory, and after them you remember repeatedly, but is this an indicator?
Among the most famous works of the artist - one ofthe first covers he painted: an order for Burroughs’s book I Am the Barbarian, thanks to which Vallejo literally took off to the heights of popularity. And in terms of demand, he got a job in publishing for many years to come! As a rule, the paintings of the master have no names, and dragons, warriors, half-naked girls and monsters are depicted on them. A characteristic feature: whatever the fantastic plot, everything is written very real and to the smallest details (for example, the muscles of the human body or the dragon's head), a sort of fantastic realism!
Dynasty and transfer of skill
By the way, Vallejo - a whole dynasty of artistsmodernity. First, Bell, which in itself is quite famous in the states. Son Dorian also draws in the style of fantasy and works simultaneously with portrait painting. Daughter Maya - artist-photographer. Pasynki Anthony and David are artists working for US galleries, as well as illustrators for books of the artistic genre (mostly fantasy and fantasy).
