Boris Artzybasheff was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, in 1899, the son of the author Mikhail Artsybashev.
And to say that his early life was eventful would be a serious understatement.
In his teens he had some art training but he was studying law at the University of Kiev
when the Russian Revolution erupted in 1917. He fought in the Ukrainian army and when they
were beaten by the Bolshevik forces he attempted to get to Russia to join the Czar's army.
But he was captured and sentenced to death by firing squad. Somehow he managed to escape
and boarded a freight ship. His first opportunity to get off the ship
was in New York where he managed to find work in a print shop.
But most importantly in 1922 his first illustration work was published in the book Verotchka's
Tales, written by Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak. They were all black and white line drawings in
an appealing bold style eminently suitable for young readers, but they gave no real indication
of what he was actually capable of. In the same year he produced a similarly folk-
art influenced set of monochromes for The Undertaker's Garland by John Peale Bishop
and Edmund Wilson. And other than occasional appearances in magazines
such as Judge, for the best part of two decades Artzybasheff would work almost exclusively
as a children's book illustrator. 1924's Feats on the Fiord, written by Harriet
Martineau, did feature a colour frontispiece, which gave an early glimpse of his prowess
with tonally applied paint, but the rest of the book was again monochrome only and strongly
suggestive of woodcuts. Whether they were created that way isn't recorded, but it is
certain that his colour illustrations for 1925's The Forge in the Forest by Padraic
Colum were. And the success of this book led to more collaborations
between the two in following years.
In 1926 Artzybasheff took American citizenship, and a year later Funnybone Alley, written
by Alfred Kreymborg was published. This book acted as the perfect showcase for the widely
differing but equally appealing extremes of Artzybasheff's illustrative talents. Most
of the pages were decorated with minimalist comic line only images which in some cases
were more like logo design than actual illustration. But there was also a series of gouache painted
colour pages, and although intentionally some way distant from purely representational they
were rendered with great attention to detail and were plausibly 3 dimensional. This combination
of simple graphic spot illustrations and more elaborate colour images proved irresistible
to young readers.
In the same year two other books were also published featuring Artzybasheff's work.
The Wonder Smith and his Son, by Ella Young was a return to simple black and white graphic
formality, and Creatures, another collaboration with Padraic Colum featured even more mannered
art deco styled monochromes.
But it was with the 1928 publication of Dhan Gopal Mukerji's children's book Gay Neck,
the Story of a Pigeon, that Artzybasheff achieved his greatest recognition at this time. The
book was an award winning popular success, and this series of highly decorative but visually
articulate monochromes made a significant contribution to the enduring appeal of the
book.
In 1929 Artzybasheff's colour illustrations appeared with increasing frequency on the
covers of the arts magazine The Golden Book. And like the earlier Funnybone Alley colour
images this was a collection of skilfully executed gouache paintings, which nodded towards
an art deco stylistic influence.
Despite this magazine work his book illustration continued undiminished and the same year saw
the publication of Three and the Moon, a collection of legends compiled by Jacques Dory. This
gave him the opportunity to revisit his engrossing colour woodcut technique, and all the images
for these tales were possessed of immense graphic authority.
And although only monochrome the woodcuts created for 1930s Orpheus: Myths of the World,
yet another partnership with Padraic Colum, were also exceptionally powerful and thoughtfully
designed.
In the same year he married, and in 1931 he published his own story, Poor Shaydullah.
This was a middle eastern fantasy tale and yet again its appeal relied on his mastery
of the woodcut process.
His 1933 edition of Aesop's fables was also created using this method, and combined with
his knack for illuminating and enhancing the bare bones of the narrative passages the sheer
graphic and aesthetic consideration produced a visually delightful series.
In 1935 Artzybasheff illustrated the fantasy novel The Circus of Dr. Lao, by Charles G.
Finney, and it was awarded title of most original book in that year. The monochrome tonally
rendered images he produced brought the surreal and frequently disturbing narrative to life
with great success. In 1937 his second authored book, Seven Simeons,
was published, and it too was well received by the public and the critics. All the illustrations
for this fairy tale were created using an incredibly well controlled and expressive
calligraphic line. And the various elements of each image were created in black and assigned
a specific mechanically applied colour, which made them highly distinctive and memorable.
2 years later in 1939 his illustrated edition of Balzac's Contes Drôlatiques, originally
written in1832 but set in the middle ages was published. And these similarly calligraphic
black and white cartoons were relatively rare examples of Artzybasheff's facility for broad
sexually themed humour. As such they were a perfect evocation of these largely salacious
stories. The book Nansen, about the Norwegian explorer,
by Anne Gertrude Hall was published in 1940, and although his illustrations were attractive
and engagingly rendered the biographical nature of the book demanded that he couldn't indulge
his usual visual imagination or wit. And it seems that this was his last illustrated
book, although he did subsequently work on some book jacket designs.
And from this point onwards it was magazine illustration and increasingly advertising
work which would dominate the rest of his career.
In the later 1930s his ability to make dull factual material visually appealing had been
put to use in several articles in Fortune magazine, and in 1941 this cover illustration
made a particularly significant impact.
But in that year the USA went to war against Germany, Japan and Italy and it was his bitter
satirical propagandist work, most of which was published in Life magazine, for which
he was justifiably celebrated at the time. The series of halftone images he published
throughout the war bore testament to his own intense loathing of fascism, and he harnessed
his formidable creative visual imagination to make remarkably eloquent attacks on the
enemy leaders. During the war Artzybasheff also created his
first portrait for the cover of Time magazine, and many more would soon follow in coming
years.
As well as his editorial illustrations he also created a successful press ad campaign
for the Wickwire Spencer Steel Company, which although comedic, clearly relied on his vehement
hostility towards the leaders of the axis, and this also seems to have been the first
time he created images which anthropomorphised the world of technology and which would later
be termed 'machinalia'.
Following the end of the war in 1945, other than the absence of children's work it was
business as usual for Artzybasheff, with mostly painted work, although there were one or two
exceptions to the rule.
The machinalia images he had started to create during the war proved enduringly popular and
featured regularly in the pages of Life magazine, and have since become arguably his most enduring
and fascinating body of images
in the later 1940s he continued to produce his highly rendered portraits for the covers
of Time, as well as monochrome editorial work of a more conceptual and surreal nature.
And at this time he became an increasingly popular choice for advertising campaigns for
all manner of clients. This rare but attention grabbing whimsical
1947 image for Pan American Airlines was a clear demonstration of what he could achieve
as a poster artist. But almost all his advertising work was for
produced fr press campaigns, and in the following year he was responsible for an extensive campaign
for Parker pens featuring highly rendered if somewhat mundane images of hands.
And In the same year he produced another series of ads for the Alcoa Steamship Company which
made for a particularly arresting combination of portraiture and exotic decoration.
But it was his campaign for Shell Oil which ran from 1949 to 1950 which allowed him to
fully harness his outlandish imagination with a series of memorably surreal images of comically
grotesque demonic creations in bizarre interaction with moving mechanical engine parts.
At this time he he produced a few more surrealist book cover designs for Raymond Chandler novels
and continued to create an immense volume of covers for Time, featuring some remarkably
engrossing and visually articulate covers which were not based on portraiture.
In the early years of the 1950s there were more advertising campaigns, the bulk of which
exploited his talent for depicting machinalia, and his tonal monochromes for the Lycoming
company's advertisements in 1952 and 53 made for a particularly entertaining and imaginative
series.
In 1954 he published a collection of his work in book form, titled As I See and In the same
year Mechanics Illustrated magazine profiled him with a cover story titled When Machines
Come to Life.
From the mid 1950s onwards the lack of evidence suggests he left advertising behind to concentrate
exclusively on his magazine work, and although there were some occasional examples appearing
in other publications it was his cover work for Time which really cemented his reputation
with the American public. Many of these continued to be meticulous portraits of the famous and
infamous but there were others which pursued his more fanciful surreal approach, some of
which were prescient of the coming digital age well before it actually happened.
His professional relationship with Time continued successfully into the 1960s and only ended
in 1965 with this comical and technologically prophetic cover for Time magazine. And that
was the year that Boris Artybasheff died at the age of 66 in Lyme, Connecticut.
In the final analysis, despite the broadly commercial function of the many images he
created, I believe much of his output actually holds up pretty well against much of the Art
hanging in galleries and museums. And more than most I think Artzybasheff's work is proof
that illustration is at its core a visual language and he remains one of the profession's
most eloquent and persuasive exponents.