I have been a huge fan of Frank Frazetta for 8 years. He is my all time favorite painter. More recently I became a fan of Czech artist Zdenek Burian - a prolific European artist (lesser known in the United States) whose career was spent painting Dinosaurs, Cavemen and illustrations for adventure novels. Over the past few years I have been collecting Burian books and scanning the artwork.
The more I looked at Zdenek Burian's paintings the more I saw resemblances to Frank Frazetta's work in theme, subject matter and style.
Frank Frazetta
Zdenek Burian
What I first noticed was how Frazetta's neanderthal design resembled the neanderthal design by Burian.
The more I looked at Zdenek Burian's paintings the more I saw resemblances to Frank Frazetta's work in theme, subject matter and style.
Zdenek Burian
Frank Frazetta
Zdenek Burian
What I first noticed was how Frazetta's neanderthal design resembled the neanderthal design by Burian.
I then noticed this Dimorphodon painting by Burian. It almost seemed to be copied and pasted into the Frazetta painting you see below:
The Dimorphodon painting above pretty much sealed the deal for me: Frazetta was definitely influenced by Zdenek Burian. Below are some interesting similarities between the two prolific artists:
The similarities are uncanny! It's almost funny to look at them and see how identical some of the pieces are. They use the same stances, form, situations, faces, muscle sculptures, and just general style. You can see it in the animals, humans AND nature. What a great realization, and amazing that you took the time to bring all of these connections to light!
ReplyDeleteit's actually nice to see...a master like Frazetta had an equally Masterful inspiration....because...he himself inspired a generation and generations tom come as well.
ReplyDeleteI think what may have happened is that Frazetta may have decided to see if he could do a superior design or different approach to Buran, or even push it further as he does all the time, I don't think Frazetta intentionally set out to put Burian's paintings into his work, not to imply that your assuming that, but also look at frazetta's conan paintings, especially the chain and serpent one, it just empowers a person!, to my knowledge I have not seen someone do that with a figure
ReplyDeleteThanks for the intro to Zdenek Burian! It's beautiful work.
ReplyDeleteFrank Frazetta did state in his various interviews an admiration for Burian. His friend and mentor Roy Krenkel introduced him to the work. Burian`s style is based upon earlier illustrators, especially J.Allen St. John and Fredrick Remington as well as N.C. Wyeth, which are all derivatives of Howard Pyle.
ReplyDeleteFrazetta`s overwhelming influence was Harold Foster and his inking was highly reminiscent of Alex Raymond. All creative efforts are influenced by something or someone. Frazetta was always able to add his personal touch to every effort bring us a magic that will live forever.
Thank you so much for the awesome and informative comment, Incarna! Many of the artists you named I have never heard of. Now I have new artists to research! :)
ReplyDeleteI am Czech "kind of expert" on Burian work, and I first would like to thank Ryan for spreading fame of my most favourite artist on this blog and on Flickr. Excellent work!!
ReplyDeleteAs I wrote an article called "Burian and his influence overseas" few yers ago, in which I mentioned his influence on FF (Krenkel-FF mentor etc.), it is great to see someone else noticed this obvious link too. I am 100% sure FF knew Burian work, but I have never read FF mentioning Burian directly. INCARNA COMICS, could you please send me any references on the interviews you mentioned. Thanks a lot. Rosta
Many thanks for share this great artist, great artist like FF have others great artist for inspiration, it is an old lawof the art
ReplyDeleteVery interesting! Thank you so much for showing us this information on Frazetta and Buran. Much appreciatted!
ReplyDeleteThank you for this information!
ReplyDeleteThe unfortunate part of Frazetta was that he believed his own hype and set out to create that for admirers of his work and young artists. I believed he once told Jeffrey Jones that he never used photographs causing Jones to work from his head. Eventually he realized that Frazetta was lying. I'm sure there were hundreds of photos if not thousands of photos he took of models and of himself to make his paintings, but he probably burned them once he finished the paintings he created. He seemed like one of those artists to me. Instead of being humble and speak about how he came up with his work at least later in his life he went to the grave with all that stuff. Egocentric man. I think in his documentary he was telling people how now in the later part of his life he takes pictures, but in reality he was using it all along. He wasn't an artist community kind of guy. He seemed more interested in the fans and not the artists who admired him.
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