Vallejo, Dorian
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Artist.
(1968- ) American artist, son of noted artist Boris Vallejo. After receiving formal training in art at his father's insistence, Vallejo began garnering cover assignments in his early twenties, mostly for Ace Books and Avon Books. Understandably, his covers were sometimes reminiscent of his father's style, particularly while illustrating works of Sword and Sorcery, as for example his 1991 covers for Michael Moorcock's Blades of Mars (1965) and Barbarians of Mars (1965), both originally published as by Edward P Bradbury. However, the younger artist seemed more inclined to foreground close-up portraits of human faces, and he displayed less interest in beautiful women and muscular barbarians wearing little or no clothing. Further, his covers for Charles L Harness's Lurid Dreams (1990) and William H Keith's Warstrider novels suggest that he felt a higher comfort level in dealing with the technological hardware of sf than his father.
Vallejo received the Jack Gaughan Award in 1994 as a significant emerging artist, and after several years of productive work, he seemed poised to become a major sf artist; however, he abandoned the field in 1997 to focus on a new career as a fine artist. Perhaps he had grown tired of having his works compared to his father's and thus sought a new venue where his last name would not inspire automatic prejudgments of his artistry. [GW]
Dorian Vallejo
born New York City, New York: 1 March 1968
works
- Drawings: Inspired by Life (Montclair, New Jersey: Open Pallette Press, 2009) [graph: foreword by Boris Vallejo: hb/Dorian Vallejo]
links
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