The Fantastic Worlds of Frank Frazetta - 45th Ed. (German, French, English)

Frank Frazetta has reigned as the undisputed king of fantasy art for 50 years, and his fame has only grown in the years since his death. His high-energy oils of Tarzan, Conan, Vampirella, and his signature Death Dealer define not just fantasy worlds but the bodies that occupy them: fleshy, muscular, tactile, and sensual.

The Fantastic Worlds of Frank Frazetta examines the artist’s life and work, including the paintings that reshaped fantasy illustration. His painting Egyptian Queen sold for $5.4 million in 2019.

Born in Brooklyn in 1928 to a Sicilian immigrant family, Frazetta was a minor league athlete whose life also included petty crime and numerous romantic encounters. Known for his movie-star looks and artistic talent, he claimed to make art only when there was nothing better to do, preferring baseball. He nevertheless began his professional comics career at age 16.

Comic-strip work led to EC Comics and then to oil paintings for Tarzan and Conan pulp covers. Although both characters had been interpreted by many artists before him, Frazetta drew on his own physical outlook and the men he had known in Brooklyn. As he explained in the 1970s, “I’m very physical minded. In Brooklyn, I knew Conan, I knew guys just like him.” His heroes became more massive, menacing, and overtly muscular than earlier interpretations.

His female figures provided a counterbalance, with pixie-like faces and full, maternal bodies, depicted as nude as censorship permitted. Thick thighs, heavy buttocks, prominent breasts, soft bellies, and hints of cellulite gave these idealized figures a tangible physical presence. Action, creatures, and twilight worlds of haunting shadow completed his distinctive approach to fantasy art.

BOOK DETAILS

FORMAT: hardcover
EDITION: 45th edition; multilingual (English, French, German)
DIMENSIONS: 6.1 × 8.5 in.
WEIGHT: 2.39 lb
PAGES: 480
ISBN: 978-3-8365-9795-1

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Dan Nadel is curator-at-large for the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at the University of California, Davis, and a contributor to the New York Review of Books and Artforum. His books and exhibitions include Peter Saul: Professional Artist Correspondence 1945–1976 (2020), Chicago Comics, 1960s to Now at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2021), and a biography of Robert Crumb (Scribner, 2024). He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Zak Smith is an artist whose work is included in public collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Saatchi Gallery, London; and The Whitney Museum of American Art. He is the author of several books, writes a regular column for Artillery magazine, and lives and works in Los Angeles.

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Dian Hanson is a senior editor and writer for TASCHEN, with more than 50 books to her credit. Her work includes Hal Foster’s Tarzan, ARNOLD, The Art of Pin-up, Masterpieces of Fantasy Art, and The Fantastic Worlds of Frank Frazetta.