Burne Hogarth (born Spinoza Bernard Ginsburg) (Chicago, 1911 – Paris, 1996), American comic strip artist, illustrator and teacher, best known for his work on anatomy and comic strips Tarzan. Tschaikowsky. no place no date. Red graphite. Drawing monogrammed lower right. Size : 35,6 x 28,1 cm.
Unless it’s a character from Hogarth’s bestiary, this is a striking evocation of the composer Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky, characterised by his lyrical and powerful use of brass instruments, in this case the French horn, whose toad seems quite agitated and worried by the few false notes it strikes; Is it performing the famous solo from the second movement andante cantabile of his Fifth Symphony, or a passage from Swan Lake in which it quickly dives in and hides in the reeds?
Tarzan‘s illustrator from 1937, succeeding Harold Foster, until 1950, he also created the characters of Drago (a young Argentinian gaucho fighting against Baron Zodiac and his gang of Nazis) and Miracle Jones (a shy little four-eyed man dreaming his life away, surrounded by beautiful women). In 1950, he devoted himself to the Cartoonists and Illustrators School, an art school for illustrators and cartoonists that he had founded in New York in 1947 with Silas H. Rhodes. The school, which was renamed the School of Visual Arts in 1956, provided theoretical and practical training for many of the artists of the Silver Age of comics. Hogarth’s drawing lessons were published. In 1970, he temporarily abandoned this activity and turned to painting. In 1972, he made a comeback with “Tarzan of the Apes“, followed by “Jungle Tales of Tarzan” four years later. He illustrated Tarzan again in 1972 for Watson-Guptill, and then adapted four short stories from Jungle Tales of Tarzan, which are considered to be the beginnings of the graphic novel. In 1992, he began Morphos, a new series in comic book form. Hogarth died in Paris in 1996 at the age of 84, after being honoured as a guest at the Salon international de la bande dessinée d’Angoulême.
The author of several reference works, he remains one of the most important creators of the genre. He developed a unique, powerful and realistic style, influenced by both Mannerism and the Baroque. Rarely has such perfection been achieved in anatomical drawing and in the description of nature.
Pencilled reference on the back : « HOGARTH – I – 009 ».
A rare cartoon by the man sometimes referred to as the “Michelangelo of 9th art”.
850 €