Samson Pollen, who passed away in December of 2018 at age 87, was one of the grandmasters of both MAM illustrations and paperback cover art.
A few years before he died, I contacted Pollen to ask if he’d be willing to let me publish a book showcasing his original illustration, as part of the “Men’s Adventure Library” book series I edit with Wyatt Doyle. He was, and we soon discovered that Sam had done enough MAM and paperback artwork to fill several books.
We published two before he died: Pollen’s Women, which focuses on MAM artwork he created that features images of alluring female characters, and Pollen’s Action, which focuses on scenes he painted for some of the wild action/adventure stories that appeared in the MAM genre. He also gave us scores of examples of his paperback cover art.
There were two periods in his career when Pollen did paperback cover paintings. The first was from the early 1950s to 1960. During the ’60s, he primarily did artwork for MAMs. As they began to fade away, he focused on paperback covers again from the late ’60s to the mid-’90s.
Pollen was born in the Bronx on March 19, 1931. His family moved to Brooklyn when he was 11. From an early age, he showed a talent for artwork. This was noticed by a high school teacher who helped him get enrolled at the venerable National Academy of Design in Manhattan. There he was taken under the wing of the school’s Dean, Charles Louis Hinton, a legendary painter, sculptor, book illustrator and muralist.
Bu hikaye Illustration dergisinin Illustration No. 67 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Bu hikaye Illustration dergisinin Illustration No. 67 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
THE ART OF PAUL BRANSOM
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Witnessing a Wild West show as a young boy was a crucial early influence that led Frank McCarthy to become a distinguished painter of Western historical themes. The excitement and emotion he felt that day stayed with him, and can be seen in the vivid action, color, and splendor that emanate from his paintings.
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For over 25 years, N.C. Wyeth was regarded as the foremost illustrator of books and magazines in the United States. His artwork for iconic tales of romance and adventure has become synonymous with the stories themselves, familiar to multiple generations of readers. Some of the best-known characters in literature have become nearly indistinguishable from the images he produced.
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\"We have some artists in the family.\" I didn't know it at the time, but my future father-in-law Aiden E. LaSalle was a master of understatement.
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THE ART OF RAYMOND JOHNSON
Raymond Sven (Ray) Johnson was a commercial illustrator who created iconic paperback book covers spanning all genres of fiction for Avon, Popular Library, Monarch and other publishers from the late 1940s through the early 1960s.
"Blow some my way"
THE DELINEATION OF DESIRE IN 1920s COMMERCIAL ILLUSTRATION
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