James (Jim) Flora is best-known for his wild jazz and classical album covers for Columbia Records (late 1940s) and RCA Victor (1950s). He authored and illustrated 17 popular children’s books and flourished for decades as a busy magazine illustrator. Few realize, however, that Flora (1914-1998) was also a prolific fine artist with a devilish sense of humor and a flair for juxtaposing playfulness, absurdity and violence.
Cute — and deadly.
Flora’s album covers pulsed with angular hepcats bearing funnel-tapered noses and shark-fin chins who fingered cockeyed pianos and honked lollipop-hued horns. Yet this childlike exuberance was subverted by a tinge of the diabolic. Flora wreaked havoc with the laws of physics, conjuring flying musicians, levitating instruments, and wobbly dimensional perspectives.
Taking liberties with human anatomy, he drew bonded bodies and misshapen heads, while inking ghoulish skin tints and grafting mutant appendages. He was not averse to pigmenting jazz legends Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa like bedspread patterns. On some Flora figures, three legs and five arms were standard equipment, with spare eyeballs optional. His rarely seen fine artworks reflect the same comic yet disturbingqualities. “He was a monster,” said artist and Floraphile JD King. So were many of his creations.
BARBERINNI
Our third release of 2021 is BARBERINNI, a riotous European cityscape inspired by Flora's 1962 sojourn to Italy. It is available now as a limited edition of 25 fine art prints.
HARBOR 63
HARBOR 63, a colorful Jim Flora maritime scene, was issued in April as a limited edition fine art print. This 1963 tempera depicts a quiescent New England harbor with docked boats and gulls aloft. The work was issued in a limited edition of 20 prints.
RIALTO
RIALTO, a wild Jim Flora tempera, was released in March 2021 as a limited edition fine art print. This early 1950s painting depicts the usual Flora vortex of otherworldly mutants, sex, peek-a-boo tenements, off-kilter landscapes, disjointed faces, and visual overload. The work was issued in a limited edition of 35 prints.