Artists

H.R. Giger was born on 5 February 1940 in Chur, Switzerland. He was a director, known for Alien (1979), Alien vs. Predator (2004) and Aliens (1986). He was married to Carmen Maria Scheifele and Mia Bonzanigo. He died on 12 May 2014 in Zurich, Switzerland.

Robert Crumb was born on 30 August 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He is a writer, known for Crumb (1994) and American Splendor (2003). He was previously married to Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Dana Morgan.

Banksy is known for Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010), Velvet Buzzsaw (2019) and The Outlaws (2021).

Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderon was born on July 6, 1907 in Mexico City, Mexico. She was the seventh daughter of Guillermo Kahlo (born Carl Wilhelm Kahlo), a successful German photographer who emigrated to Mexico from Pforzheim, and of a mestiza mother, Matilde Calderón y González. Her father encouraged her interest in art, photography and archaeology; her mother was not so well educated, and also very religious.

At the age of 6, Frida suffered an attack of poliomyelitis, which left her with a deformed leg, although exercise and determination helped her to make a good recovery. At 14, she enrolled into one of Mexico's best schools hoping to forge a career in medicine; however, on September 17, 1925, she suffered serious injury in a traffic accident in Mexico City, breaking her spinal column and pelvis in three places, as well as her collar bone and two ribs. Her right leg, already deformed by polio, was shattered and fractured in 11 places and her right foot was dislocated. Frida spent the next month in hospital, and another 2 months at home recuperating, followed by 32 operations during her life-time. Her first prolonged hospitalization gave her the opportunity to rethink her life and become a painter, in spite of constant pain and discomfort.

She met her future husband, painter Diego Rivera, when he painted a mural at her school in 1923; they re-met in 1927 and began an affair. Although her mother objected to Frida dating Diego mostly because of their age differences (he was exactly 20 years older) and their awkward appearance together (she was 5' 3" tall and weighed only 100 lbs, he was 6' and weighed nearly 300 lbs), they were married in a traditional Catholic civil ceremony in 1929.

Melancholia, illness, separation, divorce, and re-marriage marked their relationship; Diego Rivera was a womanizer and their marriage was stormy. Frustrated by his philandering, Frida (a closet lesbian/bisexual) had affairs with both men and women, including a fling with exiled Russian revolutionary Lev Trotskiy in 1938. Her career as an artist was highly successful and took her around Mexico, New York and Europe.

Frida and Diego divorced early in 1940, and soon after, Frida's health deteriorated. Her moderate to heavy drinking, chain-smoking, and a steady diet of candy exacerbated her infirmity. In the early 1930s, she developed an atrophic ulcer on her right foot, from which several gangrenous toes were amputated in 1934.

Frida and Diego Rivera reconciled and were re-married on his 54th birthday, in December 1940, in San Francisco, California. Following the amputation of her right leg in 1953, Frida became a recluse and more deeply depressed, finally losing the will to live. She was found dead at home in Mexico City on July 13, 1954, allegedly from kidney, liver and heart failure, although some believe she committed suicide by taking an overdose of pills.

Surrealist-turned-catholic painter Dalí worked on various movies as well. While a member of the French surrealist group, he co-wrote Un chien andalou (1929) and L'Age d'Or (1930) with Luis Buñuel. The latter may have marked the beginning of a long-lasting quarrel with the surrealists when Dalí did not agree on Buñuel's anti-clericalism. While Dalí's painting style became increasingly conventional, he worked on projects with Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock, for whom he wrote the dream sequence of Spellbound (1945). Plans on a movie with the Marx Brothers were dropped. The money Dalí earned in Hollywood and elsewhere, along with his racism and his fascination for Europe's fascist dictators, put an end to his relations with the (at that time mostly trotskyist) surrealists, whose leading figure André Breton since nicknamed Dalí "Avida Dollars" (anagram).

Andrew Warhol's father, Ondrej, came from the Austria-Hungary Empire (now Slovakia) in 1912, and sent for his mother, Julia Zavackyová Warholová, in 1921. His father worked as a construction worker and later as a coal miner. Around some time, the family moved to Pittsburgh. During his teenage years, Andy suffered from several nervous breakdowns. Overcoming this, he graduated from Schenley High School in Pittsburgh in 1945, and enrolled in the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University), graduating in June 1949. During college, he met Philip Pearlstein, a fellow student.

After graduation, Andy Warhol (having dropped the letter 'a' from his last name) moved to New York City, and shared an apartment with Pearlstein at St. Mark's Place off of Avenue A for a couple months. During this time, he moved in and out of several Manhattan apartments. In New York, he met Tina Fredericks, art editor of Glamour Magazine. Warhol's early jobs were doing drawings for Glamour, such as the Success is a Job in New York, and women's shoes. He also drew advertising for various magazines, including Vogue, Harper's Bazzar, book jackets, and holiday greeting cards.

During the 1950s, he moved to an apartment on East 75th Street. His mother moved in with him, and Fritizie Miller become his agent. In 1952, his first solo exhibition was held at Hugo Gallery, New York, of drawings to illustrate stories by Truman Capote. He started illustrating books, beginning with Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Book of Etiquette. Around 1953-1955, he worked for a theater group on the Lower East Side, and designs sets. It is around that time that he dyed his hair silver. Warhol published several books, including Twenty Five Cats Named Sam, and One Blue Pussy. In 1956, he traveled around the world with Charles Lisanby, a television-set designer. In April of this year, he was included in his first group exhibition, Recent Drawings USA, held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He began receiving accolades for his work, with the 35th Annual Art Directors Club Award for Distinctive Merit, for an I.Miller shoe advertisement. He published In The Bottom Of My Garden later that year. In 1957, received 36th Annual Art Directors Club Medal and Award of Distinctive Merit, for the I.Miller show advertisements, and Life Magazine published his illustrations for an article, "Crazy Golden Slippers".

In 1960, Warhol began to make his first paintings. They were based on comic strips in the likes of Dick Tracy, Popeye, Superman, and two of Coca-Cola bottles. In 1961, using the Dick Tracy comic strip, he designed a window display for Lord & Taylor, at this time, major art galleries around the nation begin noticing his work. In 1962, Warhol made paintings of dollar bills and Campbell soup cans, and his work was included in an important exhibition of pop art, The New Realists, held at Sidney Janis Gallery, New York. In November of this year, Elanor Ward showed his paintings at Stable Gallery, and the exhibition began a sensation. In 1963, he rented a studio in a firehouse on East 87th Street. He met his assistant, Gerard Malanga, and started making his first film, Tarzan and Jane Regained... Sort of (1964). Later, he drove to Los Angeles for his second exhibition at the Ferus Gallery. In November of that year, he found a loft at 231 East 47th Street, which became his main studio, The Factory. In December, he began production of Red Jackie, the first of the Jackie series. In 1964, his first solo exhibition in Europe, held at the Galerie Ileana Sonnebend in Paris, featured the Flower series. He received a commission from architect Philip Johnson to make a mural, entitled Thirteen Most Wanted Men for the New York State Pavilion in the New York World's Fair. In April, he received an Independent Film Award from Film Culture magazine. In November, his first solo exhibition in the US was held at Leo Castelli Gallery. And at this time, he began his self portrait series.

In the summer of 1965, Andy Warhol met Paul Morrissey, who became his advisor and collaborator. His first solo museum exhibition was held at the Institute of Contempary Art, at the University of Pennsylvania. During this year, he made a surprise announcement of his retirement from painting, but it was to be short lived. He would resume painting again in 1972. It was around this time that he met Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Maureen Tucker (collectively known as The Velvet Underground), and a German-born model turned chanteuse called Nico. He paired Nico with the Velvets, and they developed a close bond with Warhol. This was an alliance that forever changed the face of world culture. Warhol produced the group's first album, The Velvet Underground and Nico, which has been called "the most influential record ever" by many critics. Later, a multimedia show developed (called The Exploding Plastic Inevitable), managed, and produced by Warhol, featuring the Velvet Underground.

In the summer of 1966, Warhol's film Chelsea Girls (1966) became the first underground film to be shown at a commercial theater. In 1967, Chelsea Girls opened in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and six of his Self Portraits were shown at Expo 67 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. In August of this year, he gave a lecture at various colleges in the Los Angeles area, his persona is so popular that some colleges hire Allen Midgette to impersonate him for lectures. Later, Warhol moved The Factory to 33 Union Square West, and met Fred Hughes, who later became President of Enterprises, and Interview Magazine. In 1968, Warhol's first solo European museum exhibition was held at Moderna Museet, Stockholm. But later that year on June 3, 1968, Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanas, an ultra-radical and member of the entourage surrounding Warhol. Solanis was the founder of SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) Fortunately, Warhol survived the assassination attempt after spending two months in a hospital. This incident is the subject of the film, I Shot Andy Warhol (1996). Afterwards, Andy Warhol dropped out of the filmmaking business, but now and then continued his contribution to film and art. He never emotionally recovered from his brush with death.

During the 1970s and 80s, Andy Warhol's status as a media icon skyrocketed, and he used his influence to back many younger artists. He began publishing of Interview magazine, with the first issue being released in fall of 1969. In 1971, his play, entitled Pork, opened at London at the Round House Theatre. He resumed painting in 1972, although it was primarily celebrity portraits. The Factory was moved to 860 Broadway, and in 1975, he bought a house on Lexington Street. A major retrospective of his work is held in Zurich. In 1976, he did the Skulls, and Hammer and Sickle series. Throughout the late 70s and 80s, a retrospective exhibition was held, as Warhol began work on the Reversals, Retrospectives, and Shadows series. The Myths series, Endangered Species series, and Ads series followed through the early and mid 1980s. On 22 February 1987, a "day of medical infamy", as quoted by one biographer, Andy Warhol died following complications from gall bladder surgery. He was 58 years old.

In his youth, Hirst was already considered a rebel, but his artistic talent also emerged. After graduating from school with a high school diploma, Hirst studied fine art at Goldsmiths College in London from 1986 to 1989. In 1988, while still a student, he was given the responsibility of planning an exhibition that took place in a warehouse on London's waterfront entitled "Freeze" and featured works by Hirst and his fellow students. These student exhibitions are a welcome opportunity for gallery owners, collectors and art supporters to find out about the talents of tomorrow and their potential. During "Freeze" Charles Saatchi became aware of Damien Hirst and began to promote him. Damien Hirst had his first solo exhibition in 1991 at the Woodstock Street Gallery in London with the title "In and Out of Love".

At this time, Hirst also showed his first "animal installation": "A Thousand Years" consisted of a large glass box containing a decaying cattle head on which maggots and flies feasted. Reactions were controversial, from euphoria about the innovation to disgust and disgust. Saatchi remained convinced of Hirst's extroversion and rebelliousness. In 1992, the first Young British Artists exhibition took place at the Saatchi Gallery in north London, where Hirst exhibited "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living", probably his best-known work, alongside "A Thousand Years". He preserved a tiger shark in formaldehyde in a glass tank. This work received increased public interest again in 2006 as the shark began to decompose in its formaldehyde bath and the question arose as to whether it would reduce the value of the exhibit if it were replaced, since it would no longer be that Original would act.

Hirst continued to work on installing animals preserved in formaldehyde, creating the sheep entitled "Away from the Flock" in 1994, which was shown in the exhibition "Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away". A lobby of animal rights activists began to protest against Hirst's work, and an unknown person put black ink in the basin with the sheep, severely damaging the work of art, which cost £250,000 at the time. The controversial public discussion about his "animal installations" was fueled even more in 1995 when Damien Hirst was awarded the "Turner Prize". From then on, exhibitions around the globe followed. The extremism in his work also reached its peak in 1995 in the work "Two Fucking and Two Watching." Hirst wanted to exhibit a rotting cow and a rotting bull in New York, but the American health authorities stopped this because they feared that the smell of decay would cause nausea and vomiting among visitors.

In 1996, Damien Hirst began to branch out his creativity into different areas. He opened the restaurant "Pharmacy" in London's Notting Hill district, released his first short film "Hanging Around" and produced a pop music album called "Vindaloo". Hirst married the American Maia Norman, with whom he had two sons in 1995 and 2000. His autobiography "I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, with Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now" followed in 1998. In the years that followed, Hirst continued to focus on new installations, music, and also charity work. The "New York Show" in 2000 became one of his greatest exhibition successes. Here he exhibited the work "Hymn", which Charles Saatchi purchased for 1 million pounds.

Questions or doubts about the authenticity of Hirst's works have repeatedly arisen, as he relies on helping hands for almost all of his exhibits and often there is not much more than his idea in the pieces. This is also the case with his "spin paintings" and "spot paintings", of which he is said to have painted just five of them himself. On June 1, 2007, he presented the platinum cast of a human skull entitled "For the Love of God" set with 8,601 diamonds at the White Cube in London. There is a 52 carat diamond on the forehead. The work was sold in August 2007 for 75 million euros. According to media reports, the object was the most expensive work of contemporary art. He achieved international attention with the auction of the work "Lullaby Spring" at Sotheby's (2007). At a price of around 14.5 million euros, it achieved the highest price ever achieved for a work by a living artist.

In the following years, Hirst became one of the richest artists ever. His fortune has already been estimated at a billion dollars in the media. In 2020 he received a solo exhibition at the Fondation Cartier in Paris for his new paintings of "Cherry Blossoms"; from June to November 2020 it was the artist's first museum exhibition in France.

Matthew Barney was born on 25 March 1967 in San Francisco, California, USA. He is a director and writer, known for Drawing Restraint 9 (2005), Cremaster 2 (1999) and De Lama Lamina (2007).

Jeff Koons was born on 21 January 1955 in York, Pennsylvania, USA. He is an actor, known for Milk (2008), Monty Don's Spanish Gardens (2024) and The Hammer. He is married to Justine Wheeler. They have three children. He was previously married to Ilona Staller.

Keith Haring was born on 4 May 1958 in Reading, Pennsylvania, USA. He was a director, known for Beautiful Boy (2018), Love Is Strange (2014) and Vamp (1986). He died on 16 February 1990 in New York City, New York, USA.

Roy Lichtenstein was born on 27 October 1923 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a writer and director, known for Step: Dock Water Moving (1970), Sunset Water with Suspended Seagull (1970) and Happy Tears (2009). He was married to Dorothy Herzka and Isabel Wilson. He died on 29 September 1997 in New York City, New York, USA.

Ron English is known for This Is the End (2013), Five Days in the 'A' (2009) and Unspoken Words (2014).

Chuck Close was born on 5 July 1940 in Monroe, Washington, USA. He was a director and actor, known for Bob (1973), Six Degrees of Separation (1993) and Chuck Close (2007). He was married to Sienna Shields and Leslie Rose. He died on 19 August 2021 in Oceanside, New York, USA.

Yayoi Kusama was born on March 22, 1929 in Matsumoto, Japan. She's a contemporary artist, actress & writer. She works in a variety of media such as painting, sculpture, film & installation, focusing on producing a body of work unified in its use of repetitive, densely patterned motifs. She moved to New York in 1958, quickly establishing herself as an important member of the avant-garde alongside Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg & Eva Hesse. She has explained her use of repetition & polka dots as a means to explore infinity as well as obsessively negate the self, such as in her immersive installations Infinity Mirror Room & Fireflies on the Water. Although she returned to Japan in the 1970s to live in a mental hospital & briefly fell into obscurity, her work received newly heightened recognition & popularity after she represented Japan in the 1993 Venice Biennale. She has been the subject of regular museum & gallery exhibitions ever since. In 2008, she broke records as the highest-paid living female artist. She lives & works in Tokyo.

Jean Giraud had one of the most interesting double lives in comics history. Under his own name, he co-created the legendary western comic 'Blueberry' (1963-2012) with writer Jean-Michel Charlier. He also used the shortened signature of "Gir" for this series. This cowboy series was noted for its highly realistic artwork and more gritty, complex and adult story lines, which had a tremendous impact on several other European western comics from the late 1960s on. Giraud also created another western series with Charlier, 'Jim Cutlass' (1979), but later wrote the stories himself while Christian Rossi provided artwork. As Moebius, he was one of the most innovative and influential comic artists of the 20th century, known for groundbreaking science-fiction and fantasy works like 'Arzach' (1975), 'The Airtight Garage of Jerry Cornelius' (1976-1979) and 'The Incal' (1980-1985). He experimented with graphic styles, lay-out, dialogue, visuals and plot development. Its themes, highly influenced by philosophical writings and hallucinogenic drugs, elevated adult comics to another level. Moebius was at the forefront of a new wave of experimental comic authors, who gathered in the comics magazine Métal Hurlant (Heavy Metal) and the publishing label Les Humanoïdes Associés. He was active as a comics writer, screen writer, storyboard and concept designer too. Last but not least, superhero fans may know him from his mini-series based on Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's 'The Silver Surfer' (1988-1989). Both as Giraud and as Moebius he is one of the most important comics authors of all time, whose influence can be felt in several fantasy and science fiction films and video games too.

Early life Jean Henri Gaston Giraud was born in 1938 in Nogent-sur Marne, a commune in the eastern suburbs of Paris. Giraud was largely raised by his grandparents, with whom he lived in Fontenay-sous-Bois since his parents' divorce in 1941. He grew up reading comics and watching American B-Westerns, while developing a passion for drawing. His mother encouraged him to further pursue his artistic ambitions, and he took art courses from an early age. He enrolled at The Duperré School of Applied Arts in Paris, where he studied alongside Jean-Claude Mézières, who became a close friend, and Pat Mallet for two years. While feeling no desire for designing wallpaper and furniture, he started drawing his own western comic strips, inspired by Belgian artists like André Franquin and Morris. He also published his first illustrations in Fiction magazine. Other artistic influences of Giraud were were Leonardo Da Vinci, Rembrandt Van Rijn, Winsor McCay, Harold Foster, Jijé, Jack Kirby and Robert Crumb.

After leaving the Academy in 1955 he went to live with his mother in Mexico for eight months. There, he was exposed to mind-expanding substances, sex and the desert for the first time. The experience had an enormous impact on his future life and career, both as Giraud and as Moebius. Back in France in 1956, he sold his first comic story ('Les Aventures de Frank et Jérémie') to Far West, a western magazine edited by Marijac. Through Mézières he subsequently got the opportunity to work for the children's publications of Éditions Fleurus, such as Fripounet et Marisette, Coeurs Vaillants and Âmes Vaillantes between 1956 and 1958. His contributions were mainly short stories of an educational and historical nature, and he also provided artwork to a publication called Sitting-Bull. He spent his military service in Algeria and Germany, where he made illustrations and comic strips for the army monthly 5/5 Forces Françaises. Another contributor to this magazine was André Chéret.

Assistant of Jijé Back in civilian life, Giraud became an apprentice of Joseph Gillain, the classic Belgian comic artist known as Jijé. He inked the episode 'La Route de Coronado' of Jijé's western series 'Jerry Spring', which was published in Spirou magazine in 1961. Jijé learned Giraud the finer points of the comics profession, training him in creating simple lay-outs, effective usage of black, rhythm in storytelling and working with photo documentation. He also worked on comic stories for Bonux-Boy (1960-1961) and Total Journal (1966-1968), two advertising comic magazines edited by Jijé's son Benoît, who had become a close friend of his. In 1961 and 1962, Giraud and Mézières were artists at Studio Hachette, where they participated in collections like 'L'Histoire des Civilisations'.

Blueberry When scriptwriter Jean-Michel Charlier proposed Jijé to create a new western series for Charlier's magazine Pilote, Jijé suggested Giraud for the assignment. The first story, 'Fort Navajo', premiered in Pilote on 31 October 1963. The initial set-up featured an ensemble cast, but the character of Lieutenant Mike S. Donovan, a.k.a. Blueberry, quickly took the centre stage. Along the way, he received two sidekicks, namely the boozing gold prospector Jimmy McClure and Redneck, an expert on Indian matters. However, Dargaud, the original publisher of the books, continued to use the series title 'Fort Navajo, une Aventure du Lieutenant Blueberry' until 1973.

The first 'Blueberry' cycle dealt with the American Indian Wars, and consisted of more basic adventure stories in the tradition of Charlier's other series, such as 'Buck Danny', 'La Patrouille des Castors' and 'Barbe-Rouge'. Giraud based Blueberry's original looks on the French western actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, while his artwork in general was still heavily inspired by Jijé. As the series evolved, Giraud became more and more influenced by the gritty western movies of Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci and Sam Peckinpah, American comic artists Milton Caniff and Hal Foster, and Western painter Frederic Remington. Giraud's brushwork became grittier too, and his involvement in Charlier's scripts increased. Giraud let Blueberry age as the stories progressed, which was highly unusual in comic series at the time. The stories and the action became more hard-boiled after Pilote began to focus on a more mature readership from 1968 on.

The series gained full maturity when Giraud and Charlier made a cycle about a hidden treasure of Confederate gold in Mexico. This story arc consists of the albums 'Chihuahua Pearl' (1973), 'L'Homme qui Valait 500.000 $' ('The Half-A-Million Dollar Man', 1973), 'Ballade pour un Cercueil' ('Ballad for a Coffin', 1974), 'Le Hors-la-loi' ('The Outlaw', 1974) and 'Angel Face' (1975). The flawless hero of 'Fort Navajo' had by now transformed into a normal human being, one who wasn't safe from being manipulated, betrayed and tortured. Giraud's explicit graphic portrayals of the dirty and sweaty Far West with all its violence and dangers paved the way for other European western comics, such as 'Comanche' by Hermann and Greg, 'Jonathan Cartland' by Michel Blanc-Dumont, 'Durango' by Yves Swolfs and even the later 'Jerry Spring' stories by Jijé. A dispute over royalties with publisher Georges Dargaud led to a more complex publication history of 'Blueberry' stories after 1973. Stories were prepublished in Nouveau Tintin (1975), Métal Hurlant (1979), Super As (1980), L'Écho des Savanes (1981) and Spirou (1983), before they were published directly in albums. The books were published by Fleurus, Novedi and Alpen, before Giraud returned to Dargaud in 1995. In addition, Giraud and Charlier had been presenting scenes from Blueberry's younger years in Super Pocket Pilote from 1968. Dargaud published three books with these stories in 1975 and 1979. Three new installments of 'La Jeunesse de Blueberry' ('Young Blueberry') were created by Charlier and New-Zealand artist Colin Wilson at Novedi between 1985 and 1990. During their dispute with Dargaud, Giraud and Charlier created 'Jim Cutlass', another western comic of which one album was published by Les Humanoïdes Associés in 1979. Giraud revived the series in 1991 and wrote six more books for artist Christian Rossi at Casterman until 1999.

Moebius While Giraud and Charlier had basically renewed the western comics genre with 'Blueberry', Giraud embarked upon even more innovative territory under his pen name Moebius. He had first used the name for a couple of short stories in the satirical monthly Hara-Kiri in 1963-1964. Starting in 1969, Moebius made a series of science fiction illustrations for sci-fi novels published by Opta, which marked the beginning of Giraud's exploits outside of the mainstream. Giraud further developed his Moebius persona while on a hiatus from 'Blueberry' between 1974 and 1979. With comic artist Philippe Druillet, journalist/writer Jean-Pierre Dionnet and financial director Bernard Farkas he launched the revolutionary comics anthology Métal Hurlant in December 1974. The men gathered under the collective name Les Humanoïdes Associés, which also became the name of the associated publishing house. Métal Hurlant published mainly avant-garde science fiction and fantasy comics. Besides aforementioned authors, it also ran work by international creators like Richard Corben, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri, Enki Bilal, Caza, Serge Clerc, Alain Voss, Berni Wrightson, Milo Manara, Jordi Bernet, Antonio Segura and Frank Margerin. A licensed US edition called Heavy Metal was launched in April 1977. The final issue of the original run of Métal Hurlant appeared in 1987, but Les Humanoïdes Associés has continued to publish comics and graphic novels in France since then.

The Airtight Garage Moebius experimented with every aspect of the comics medium. He switched from drawing with a brush to a pen, which resulted in more open drawings with influences from the "Clear Line" style. He crafted highly imaginative worlds and creatures, while his narratives are mainly based around improvisation and character development instead of plot. An essential character in Moebius' output is Major Grubert, a rather stereotypical explorer inspired by Frank M. Buck's 1930 novel 'Bring 'm Back Alive'. The character had first appeared in a short story for Pilote, and then in experimental and surreal stories for France-Soir and Fluide Glacial. He was also instrumental in one of Moebius' masterpieces, 'Le Garage Hermétique' ('The Airtight Garage', 1976-1979). In this series of often confusing short stories, Major Grubert encounters several entities seeking to invade an asteroid in a pocket universe. Another notable character is Jerry Cornelius, a secret agent created by sci-fi and fantasy author Michael Moorcock as a sort of "open source" character for other authors to work with.

The Airtight Garage

'Le Garage Hermétique' was serialized in Métal Hurlant from 1 March 1976 to 1 June 1979., and in the US edition Heavy Metal from 1977. The original French book version was published in black-and-white under the title 'Major Fatal' in 1979. The story was colorized for the US publication, and has been published both as a graphic novel (Titan Books, 1989) and a 4-issue comic book series in 1992. The comic is widely praised because of its improvised nature, which makes the reader a witness of the artistic process of story development, while it also leaves a lot open to the reader's own interpretation. Therefore, 'The Airtight Garage' is not only a journey through a fictional world, but also through an artist's mind. In later years, Moebius created sequels like 'L'Homme du Ciguri' ('The Man from the Ciguri', 1995) and 'Le Chasseur Déprime' (2008), while the first Moebius book at Éditions du Fromage, 'Le Bandard Fou' ('The Horny Goof', 1974) can be considered a prequel. Major Grubert has continued to appear in Moebius' work throughout his career, and was also the central character in the "sketchbook graphic-novel" 'Le Major' in 2011.

Arzach Moebius' talent for creating strange and desolate landscapes was even more showcased in 'Arzach', a collection of short comic stories about a silent warrior riding on a pterodactyl-like creature. The stories have no balloons, captions or onomatopoeias, which makes up for a surreal and psychedelic reading experience. Even the main character's name seems disturbing, as Moebius spelled it differently in every story (Arzak, Arzach, Harzac, Harzach, Harzack). The installments appeared in Métal Hurlant between 1 April 1975 and 1 January 1976 and were collected in book format in 1976. Moebius returned to this character at the end of his life, when he planned to explore the character's origins in a trilogy. Only the first book was published under the title 'Arzak: L'Arpenteur' ('Arzak: The Surveyor') by Glénat in 2010. The second and third installment were never created because of the author's death in 2012.

L'Incal Moebius' first collaboration with avant-garde comics writer and film director Alejandro Jodorowsky was in 1975, when he did creature and character designs and storyboards for Jodorowsky's planned movie adaptation of Frank Herbert's epic sci-fi novel 'Dune' in 1975. The project was never completed, but Moebius and Jodorowsky continued to work together on comics projects. After releasing the comic book 'Les Yeux du Chat' at Les Humanoïdes Associés in 1978, they created a comics classic with 'L'Incal' ('The Incal'). The saga focuses on P.I. John Difool, who receives the Light Incal, a crystal of enormous powers. The original series by Moebius and Jodorowsky was prepublished in Métal Hurlant from December 1980 on and then made available in six books by Les Humanoïdes Associés between 1981 and 1988. It was the first installment in Jodorowsky's own sci-fi universe known as the "Jodoverse", which also includes 'Meta-Barons' (drawn by Juan Giménez), 'The Technopriests' (drawn by Zoran Janjetov) and 'Mégalex' (drawn by Fred Beltrán). A sequel called 'Après L'Incal' was started by Jodorowsky in 2000. Moebius drew only the first book; the second and third installments were drawn by José Ladrönn. The character's early years were explored in 'Avant l'Incal' by Jodorowsky and Zoran Janjetov (1988-1995) and a final cycle called 'Final Incal' was produced by Jodorowsky and Ladrönn (2008-2014).

Moebius was highly influenced by drugs and the philosophies of French New Age guru Jean-Paul Appel-Guéry and Swiss nutritionist Guy-Claude Burger for his next major work, 'Le Monde d'Edena' ('The Aedena Cycle'). The artist's journeying lifestyle also left its mark on the comic; the installments were drawn in Tokyo, California and France. The cycle had its origin in a promotional comic Moebius had made for French car manufacturer Citroën in 1983 ('Une Croisière Citroën sur l'Étoile'), in which two characters are transported to a "Garden of Eden" in another galaxy. Éditions Casterman collected the rest of what has to be Moebius' most philosophical series in four books between 1988 and 2001. Main themes are dreams, nutrition, health, biology and sexuality, structured societies and the archetype of good and evil. The series was published in English by Marvel/Epic comics between 1988 and 1994. Moebius and Jodorowsky also made 'Le Coeur Couronné' (1992-1998), a comics trilogy about the affair of a Philosophy professor with a delusional student, as well as the erotic one-shot 'Griffes d'Ange' (1994).

Another notable comic by Moebius is 'The Long Tomorrow' (1976), a futuristic crime noir short story written by Dan O'Bannon, who also did the special effects on Jodorowsky's 'Dune' project. The story has been a huge source of inspiration for George Lucas' 'Star Wars' film 'The Empire Strikes Back', Ridley Scott's sci-fi film 'Blade Runner' (1982) as well as the fashion in the videoclip for 'Firestarter' by The Prodigy (1996). Compilations of Moebius' other short stories were published by Les Humanoïdes in books like 'Double Évasion' (1981), 'La Citadelle Aveugle' (1989) and 'Escale sur Phargonescia' (1989).

From 1983, Moebius was active in merchandising his properties. He co-founded the publishing label Aedena in 1984, while his wife Claudine Giraud oversaw Starwatcher, a company specialized in publishing and distributing related products. Based in Los Angeles, Moebius got most of his graphic novels published in the US through Marvel Comics. He furthermore worked with Stan Lee on a two-issue mini-series starring the 'Silver Surfer' for Marvel's Epic imprint in 1988 and 1989. Under his own Aedena label, he produced the portfolio 'La Cité-Feu' (1985) with Geoff Darrow, and he published 'La Nuit de l'Étoile' (1986), a sci-fi comic written by Moebius and drawn by Marc Bati.

Writings Giraud had been writing comic stories for other artists since the early 1970s. For Pilote, he wrote the initial episodes of the post-apocalyptic comic 'Jason Muller' for Claude Auclair in 1970, as well as a couple of short stories for Jacques Tardi. His further scriptwriting work includes six books of 'Altor' with Marc Bati, a comic initially published under the title 'Cristal Majeur' (Dargaud, 1986-2003), and 'Little Nemo', a sequel to the classic American newspaper comic 'Little Nemo in Slumberland' by Winsor McCay, which was drawn by Bruno Marchand (Casterman, 1994-2002). Giraud and Bati have also made a comic book based on George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' ('La Ferme des Animaux' at Novedi in 1985). In 2005 Moebius wrote the French manga story 'Icare' for Jirô Taniguchi (Éditions Kana). With Jean-Marc Lofficier, who also translated most of his works to English, he worked on the scripts of a couple of stories set in the same universe as 'The Airtight Garage'. 'The Elsewhere Prince' was drawn by and Eric Shanower and published by Epic Comics in six issues in 1990, while Jerry Bingham did the art for 'The Onyx Overlord', which was published in four issues in 1992. Witch scriptwriter Jean-Luc Coudray, he made 'Les Histoires de Monsieur Mouche' in 1994.

Not surprisingly, 'Blueberry' also changed into a different direction because of Giraud's work under his alter ego Moebius. Especially after Jean-Michel Charlier's death in 1989, Giraud further developed the character's background and deeper emotions. He completed the final story he had started with Charlier, 'Arizona Love' (Alpen, 1990), and wrote and drew five more albums, which form the 'Mister Blueberry' cycle (1995-2005). Instead of following Charlier's plan of rehabilitating Blueberry and sending him back to the army, Giraud decided to turn his protagonist into a loafing civilian who spends his days playing poker. He also added another spin-off to the 'Blueberry' universe, which focused on Blueberry's adventures as a marshal in the war against the Apaches prior to the Confederate gold storyline. The first two books of 'Marshal Blueberry' were drawn by William Vance (Alpen, 1991, 1993), while the third one was drawn by Michel Rouge (Dargaud, 2000). In the meantime, the 'Young Blueberry' series was still continued by François Corteggiani and Michel Blanc-Dumont, although with no creative input from Giraud.

A third planned spin-off about an elderly Blueberry was called 'Blueberry: 1900', and was supposed to be drawn by François Boucq. Giraud wanted Blueberry to reside with the Hopi tribe and meditate under the influence of mind-expanding substances, while a comatose President McKinley is levitated in his bed. The project was halted by Philippe Charlier, the son and heir of Jean-Michel Charlier, who found this new direction too far away from the creative integrity and legacy of his father. However, the psychedelic hallucinations did end up in the 2004 movie 'Blueberry, l'expérience secrète' starring Vincent Cassel, Michael Madsen and Juliette Lewis (with Jean Giraud in a cameo role). The film was no commercial success, but did gain a certain cult status as a "trip film". Since it deviated so much from the source material, the Charlier heirs demanded that their family name should be removed from the credits.

Film work Besides the abandoned 'Dune' project, Jean Giraud/Moebius has participated in the development of several movies. He did storyboards and concept designs for Ridley Scott's movie 'Alien' (1977), 'Tron' by The Walt Disney Company (1982), René Laloux's 'Les Maîtres du Temps' ('Time Masters', 1982), James Cameron's 'The Abyss' (1989) and Luc Besson's 'The Fifth Element' (1997). A comic album with stills from 'Les Maîtres du Temps' and a companion book with storyboard drawings and photos were published by Les Humanoïdes Associés in 1982. In 1985 Moebius headed for Tokyo to work on the script and conceptual art for 'Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland' (1989), an animated film based on Winsor McCay's 'Little Nemo in Slumberland'. Giraud also made original character designs and did visual development for the Warner Bros movie 'Space Jam' in 1996. In the 1990s, Giraud worked on a planned movie adaptation of 'The Airtight Garage', which remained unreleased due to financial problems. The Chinese 3D-CGI feature film 'Thru the Moebius Strip' (2005) was based on an original story and designs by Jean Giraud.

Later career & recognition Several artbooks with Moebius' drawings and paintings have been published, such as 'Starwatcher' (1986), 'Made in L.A.' (1988), 'Quattre-vingt huit' (1990), 'Chaos' (1991), 'Chroniques Métalliques' (1992), 'Fusion' (1995), 'Une jeunesse heureuse' (1999). He additonally made illustrations for books and magazines, including an edition of Paulo Coelho's novel 'The Alchemist'. He also worked with Coelho on the video game 'Pilgrim' in 1997. In 1999, Giraud released 'Giraud/Moebius - Histoire de mon double', which featured a biography of Giraud by Moebius and vice versa. From 2004 to 2010, Stardom published 'Inside Moebius', an illustrated autobiographical fantasy featuring many of his longtime characters, such as Major Grubert, Blueberry and Arzak. The project covers 700 pages and was published in six hardcover volumes.

Jean Giraud was invested with a knighthood in the Ordre National du Mérite in 2011. He died in Paris, on 10 March 2012 at the age of 73, after a long battle with cancer. One of his final comics created under his own name was 'La Version Irlandaise', the first of a two-part volume in the 'XIII' series, which was released at the same time with its companion piece by the regular authors William Vance and Jean Van Hamme in November 2007.

An interview that Numa Sadoul had with Jean Giraud was published under the title 'Mister Moebius et Docteur Gir' at Albin Michel in 1976. It was reprinted by Casterman in 1991 in 'Moebius : Entretiens avec Numa Sadoul', which also contained later interviews. A large career retrospective called 'Trait de Génie Giraud/Moebius' was on exhibit in the Comics Museum in Angoulême, and an extensive catalogue edited by Thierry Groensteen was published for this occasion.

Legacy and influence With an oeuvre fuelled by mind-expanding drugs and New Age philosophies, Moebius has created a legacy which remains an inspiration to science fiction and fantasy authors to this day. He is considered one of the most influential comic artists since Hergé, and among his many and diverse admirers are comic authors like Hergé, Stan Lee and Marc Sleen, film directors Federico Fellini, George Lucas, Ridley Scott and Quentin Tarantino, and novelists Paulo Coelho, Neil Gaiman and William Gibson. He was an influence on the work of Hayao Miyazaki, William Stout, Emmanuel Roudier, Arno, Georges Bess, Dominique Hé, André Juillard, François Boucq, Geof Darrow, Louis Paradis, Martin tom Dieck, Milan Misic, Katsuya Terada, Jean-Jacques Sanchez, Zalozabal, Karel Verschuere, Jan Bosschaert, Stedho, François Schuiten, Frank and Thierry Van Hasselt. 'Arzach' was a major influence on the development of the 'Panzer Dragoon' video game by Team Andromedia in 1995. 'The Airtight Garage' inspired by the name for a San Francisco-based bar and video game parlor and for a band from Washington DC (1993-1996).

Norman Rockwell was born on 3 February 1894 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for The Polar Express (2004), Stagecoach (1966) and Take Me Home (2013). He was married to Mary Leete "Molly" Punderson, Mary Rhodes Barstow and Catherine Irene O'Connor. He died on 8 November 1978 in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, USA.

Acclaimed writer, Dr. Seuss was born Theodor Geisel in Springfield, Massachusetts, on Wednesday, March 2nd, 1904. After attending Dartmouth College and Oxford University, he began a career in advertising. His advertising cartoons, featuring Quick, Henry, the Flit!, appeared in several leading American magazines. Dr. Seuss's first children's book, titled "And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street", hit the market in 1937, changing the face of children's literature forever. It was rejected 27 times before it was finally published by Vanguard Press in 1937.

Following World War 2, Geisel and his first wife Helen moved to La Jolla, California, where he wrote and published several children's books in the coming years, including If I Ran the Zoo and Horton Hears a Who! A major turning point in Geisel's career came when, in response to a 1954 Life magazine article that criticized children's reading levels, Houghton Mifflin and Random House asked him to write a children's primer using 220 vocabulary words. The resulting book, The Cat in the Hat, was published in 1957 and was described by one critic as a "tour de force." The success of The Cat in the Hat cemented Geisel's place in children's literature.

In the following years, Geisel wrote many more books, both in his new simplified-vocabulary style and using his older, more elaborate technique, and including such favorites as Green Eggs and Ham and How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966). In 1966, with the help of eminent & longtime cartoonist, Chuck Jones, The Grinch was immediately adapted into an animated film & Boris Karloff was the narrator, (& as the evil Grinch, that turned away from its bitterness, as the special begins) of the half-hour Christmas animation special.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 and three Academy Awards, Seuss overall was the author and illustrator of 44 children's books, some of which have been made into audio-cassettes, animated television specials, and videos for people of all ages. Even after his death in Autumn of 1991, Dr. Seuss continues to be the best-selling author of children's books in the world. Following the death of his first wife Helen Geisel in 1967, Geisel wed Audrey Geisel, who remained his wife until his death on Tuesday, September 24th, 1991, at the age of 87 years 6 months and 22 days. His full life-time was 31,982 days, equaling 4,568 weeks & 6 days.

Blue Man Group is known for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), Space Chimps (2008) and Spare Parts (2015).

The artist Georgia O'Keeffe was born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin on November 18, 1887. In 1905, O'Keeffe attended the Art Institute of Chicago before moving to New York City to study at the Art Students League in New York City in the period 1907-08. After working as a commercial artist in Chicago, she became interested in Oriental design. From 1912 to 1914, she worked as a public school art supervisor in Amarillo, Texas, and then moved back to New York City to attend Columbia, where she took art classes conducted by Arthur Wesley Dow. Dow's system of art education was rooted in Oriental art themes. In 1916, she was appointed department head of art-teacher training at West Texas State Normal College, where she used Dow's philosophy in her teacher-training. She remained at the college through 1918.

Photographer Alfred Stieglitz, who was keen on modernism and modernist artists, discovered O'Keefe's work and exhibited some of her abstract drawings in New York in 1916. By the following year, the United States had become embroiled in World War One, and Stieglitz's professional commitments were nullified. He began to used O'Keeffe as a photographic model, creating works that engendered emotion and meaning through the conscious used of shape, line, and tone. Stieglitz began a cycle of cloud photographs he called "Equivalents," claiming that form conveyed emotional and psychological meaning in the visual arts, not the specific subject of the artist. As New York City thrust its way into the sky in its metamorphosis into the greatest and most important city on earth in the early 20th Century, Stieglitz shot cityscapes of New York during different time periods. These works great influenced O'Keeffe as there's was a synergistic relationship.

Their relationship also became sexual, and in time, Stieglitz left his wife for O'Keeffe, who was 24 years his junior. Their love was deep, but their relationship was often stormy; Stieglitz liked city life, with all its noise and broiling activity, while O'Keeffe loved open space and solitude. Stieglitz's cycle of photographs of her extended arguably is his most lasting work.

Married to Stieglitz, the proponent of modernism, O'Keeffe's early style featured intrinsically abstract subject matter such as details of flowers and architectural motifs. A common trope in her paintings were enlargements of botanical details. Shew was developing her own distinctive, and distinctively American style, an iconography that includes featuring details of plant forms that would one day embrace bleached bones and New Mexican desert landscapes, all sharply rendered.

In 1924, O'Keeffe married Steiglitz. Though Stieglitz masterfully shaped her career, there was resentment as O'Keeffe was the epitome of what was then called "the modern woman," i.e. independent, while her husband, of German Jewish stock, had old time European patriarchal prejudices. He at first tried to control O'Keeffe, until they reached an understanding. The bisexual O'Keeffe eventually had a nervous breakdown and wound up a sanatorium. But always, there was the art.

From 1926 to '29, O'Keeffe painted a cycle of New York City views, but her life's work generally focused on simple buildings rather than skyscrapers. Her paintings further simplified the buildings into an archetypal folk architecture that exuded permanence and tranquility.

O'Keeffe eschewed criticism that found symbolism in her work, such as the sexual imagery allegedly found in paintings such as "Black Iris" (1926). Her botanicals subjects in close-up begged an interpretation focused on their generative capacity, and the possibility inherent in these works generates their force and mystery. Her botanical works were full of energy and exalted life.

O'Keeffe began spending time in New Mexico in 1929. She became enthralled with the mesas, Spanish architecture, wooden crucifixes, fauna, and desert terrain. These all became elements in her work, which are characterized by clarity and unity, her subjects exist in their own solipsistic worlds.

"I simply paint what I see," O'Keeffe is quoted as saying, from O'Keeffe's own essays published in Georgia O'Keeffe in 1987.

Arguably her most famous visual trope, the sun-bleached skull of a cow, were eternalizations of Thanatos, a counterpoint to her early botanical work suffused with Eros. O'Keeffe did not go in for symbolism and argued that the skulls were merely symbols of the desert and of nothing else

"To me, they are strangely more living than the animals walking around -- hair, eyes and all, with their tails switching."

O'Keeffe bought an old adobe house in New Mexico in 1945 and moved there after Steiglitz's death in 1946. The house became one of her most frequent subjects. Her style simplified details of doors, windows, and walls to where they seemed like unmodified planes of color, an abstraction In the 1960s, patterns of clouds and landscapes seen from the air became a trope of her work, evoking the romantic view of nature that was par of her early work. Her work in the 1970s featured intense portrayals of a black rooster.

The nearly 100-year-old O'Keeffe continued to paint until a few weeks before her death. She died on March 6, 1986.

René Magritte was born on 21 November 1898 in Lessines, Belgium. He is known for Between Earth and the End of Time (1995), Quality Content (2017) and Illusion of Seeing (1990). He was married to Georgette Magritte. He died on 15 August 1967 in Brussels, Belgium.

Peter Howson was born on 27 March 1958 in London, Greater London, England, UK.

Takashi Murakami was born on 1 February 1962 in Tokyo, Japan. He is a producer and director, known for Jellyfish Eyes (2013), Jellyfish Eyes 2 and To LOVE-Ru (2008).

Kaws is known for Westermann: Memorial to the Idea of Man If He Was an Idea (2023), The Warhol Effect (2024) and Unbanned: The Legend of AJ1 (2018).

Duane Hanson is known for Cell Count (2012), Leverage (2008) and Holed-Up (2017).