The Genius of Boris Artzybasheff

The Scary Retro Art of a Master 

It's Halloween time and no better time to visit the scary and sometimes whimsical retro art of Boris Artzybasheff. The Russian born American artist was for many years one of Time Magazine's top cover artists. Boris immigrated to America from a Russia at the age of 20.

I stumbled across him doing work for the Barrows company in 2015 and then again when I began teaching illustration at Moore College of Art and design in our anthropomorphic project we use for the Sophomore class. Boris is best known for anthropomorphizing machines which basically means giving them human features. While these wildly bizarre machines are sometimes nightmarish, they also give you an exact feeling of how it was during (and post) World War II and the Cold War.

Artzybasheff's work is certainly not well known, but it deserves a peak into the past especially during hollowing Halloween time. His work is not only highly inventive, but it shows the young artists the precise use of value scale (white to dark) along with telling an incredible story with each illustration. Most of his work exists in black and white advertising machine parts or machinery. This helps the beginning illustrator who might be a little bit anxious about using color concentrate on concept and value alone. When Boris uses color, he does so judiciously.

Mind you, they are not all horrific and some are downright playful, but often there is a darker note there, either Nazi power, the Cold War, or in the example below with depictions of anxiety, repressed hostility or timidity and frustration. 

The more you look at these Artzybasheff concoctions you begin to see extra touches he has tucked away in the secondary areas of the illustration. Keep looking at his illustrations and you'll find special surprises in hands, feet or even a occasionally tongue or muscle.

In the 1950s and 60s art directors sought out Boris's work for the covers of their magazines. Most famous for his machines, he also illustrated many other subjects including portraits, fairytales and even maps.

Poor Shaydullah/Published 1931

For the last five years at Moore College of Art and design we've been giving out the anthropomorphic project, and I have to go no further than Boris for the best example of these treatments and retro illustration. He's been dazzling every young artists that I ever taught and raises the bar for the computer generation. 

His satire and technical skills––all done by hand––are an inspiration. A personal goal is make this incredible artist's work become as popular today as it was during the 1950s and 60s.