NEW YORK – Basil Gogos, who created some of the most famous paintings of cinematic monsters, such as Dracula, the Wolf Man, the Phantom of the Opera, and Frankestein, passed away at the age of 88 on September 13. His wife, Linda Touby, reported that the cause of death was a heart attack.
Gogos, as the New York Times reported, was born on March 12, 1929 in Alexandria, Egypt, to Greek parents who were also born in Egypt. His father, Steve, worked on the railroads and his mother, Maria as a fashion designer before they opened their own clothing store in Manhattan. They had previously lived in Boston and Washington before settling in New York. The artistic family included an uncle who encouraged the young Basil to paint and a grandmother who painted on dishes and fabrics to support her family, as the New York Times reported.
Gogos attended art schools in Washington and then studied at the Art Students League in Manhattan with Frank Reilly, an artist and illustrator. Gogos’ first sale, the cover of the western novel Pursuit by Lewis B. Patten was made during his time at the Art Students League. His first movie monster portrait in 1960 was of actor Vincent Price from the Roger Corman film House of Usher based on the famous short story by Edgar Allan Poe. The painting was for the cover of Famous Monsters of Filmland, a magazine published by Jim Warren. As reported in the Times, Warren told Gogos to paint “something new and unusual.” When Gogos was too embarrassed to deliver his work, his agent delivered the piece to Warren who was so pleased with the result that he called the artist and said “Where are you? Why aren’t you here so I can hug you and kiss you?” as quoted in the Times from the book Famous Monster Movie Art of Basil Gogos (2006), compiled and edited by Kerry Gammill and J. David Spurlock.
In the 1980s, Gogos gave up painting movie monsters and pursued fine-art painting including abstracts, landscapes, and wildlife scenes. He also worked as a photo retoucher for United Artists and as a storyboard artist for Ogilvy & Mather, an advertising agency. Gogos taught art classes as well.
Eventually, Gogos returned to the monsters that are most associated with his work today. He did covers for Monsterscene magazine, appeared at horror and science-fiction conventions, painted the classic monsters for Topps’s Universal Monsters Illustrated cards in 1994, and also commissions, like the cover of Rob Zombie’s Hellbilly Deluxe album in 1998, as noted in the Times.
Gogos’ monster art allowed him to “be his own art director,” as the Times reported.
“Whenever I do a monster for a magazine or a client or even for myself, I’m completely free,” he said, as quoted in the Times. “If people tell me what colors to use, I’m stumped. It gets in the way and it hurts the job. That’s why I tell people, ‘I will do it my way.’ ”
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