The Art of Drew Struzan

Drew Struzan found out the difference between a "fine artist" and "illustrator" while still in art school. A fine artist painted whatever he wanted. An illustrator painted for money. "I wanted to paint what I wanted," he said, "but I was hungry aldready, so I said I'd become an illustrator. My only motivation was to paint for a living." Within a bountiful career spanning nearly four decades, Drew has seen the craft of illustration become fine art in its own right - housed in galleries, commanding premium prices, and viewed world-wide - and was in fact one of the instigators of that transition with his unforgettable and iconic movie poster paintings. His striking renderings and flair for dead-on portraiture provided a visual identity for everything from Star Wars and Indiana Jones series to the Muppets and the Back to the Future trilogy, with dozens of equally recognizable movies in-between.

The Art of Drew Struzan is a behind-the-scenes collation of the numerous "comps" (in-work sketches and rough illustrations) that led to many of these famous images, along with abandoned concepts and never-realized projects such as posters for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. It is a peek inside not only the artist's studio, but a parallel history of the rise and fall of movie poster illustration in Hollywood. Here the work is described in the artist's own voice from the vaunted victories to the numbing disppointments, in a project-to-project timeline that exemplifies the history of a form that is gradually becoming lost to all except those who cherish it.