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.
RIALTO
COMING SOON: RIALTO, a new fine art print of a wild Jim Flora tempera. 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 will be issued as a limited edition of 35 prints at the end of January 2021. Two additional works are being produced for limited edition release in February and March.
JIM FLORA 2021 CALENDARS
Now available: Jim Flora 2021 letterpress calendars featuring the honking sax player from our Dig You Later notecard set. The calendar backing cards were designed and letterpress-printed by Yee-Haw Industries, Knoxville TN, and assembled with a 2021 calendar pad by Pioneer House (successor company to Yee-Haw). The calendar is 9-3/4" high and 4-1/2" wide and comes packaged in a clear sleeve.
And the Dig You Later notecard sets (four cards/four musicians) are now back in stock.