Spot illustration, Research & Engineering magazine, April 1956, showcasing the secret to corporate achievement: sever your rival’s head. The sword-wielding executive regiment works most effectively when your competitor is a sawtoothed reptile. In the above illustration the exec-suite platoon seems to have arrived after the fact, as evidenced by the detached noggin and “+” in place of eyeballs, which in cartoons usually signify death.

Top half of 1948 Columbia 78 rpm two-disc sleeve, Come to the Circus. The complete cover and interior illustrations were reproduced in The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora. The 2004 book featured most then-known Flora covers from his Columbia and RCA Victor years. We have since discovered others, and are searching for a handful of strays that (based on archival clues) may or may not exist. Rather than include recent discoveries in our subsequent Flora…

Untitled, undated, unfinished ship and helmsman sketches; tempera and pencil in sketchbook. These drafts, which probably date from the early to mid-1950s, are juxtaposed on the page as shown.

Pretzel-making machine, spot illustration, Research & Engineering magazine, September 1955, marking Flora’s debut in this short-lived monthly. The cover art is credited and the interior illos unmistakably reflect his whimsy, but no art director is listed in the masthead. Starting with the combined October/November issue Flora is ID’ed as art director, a position he held thru August 1956. An extensive gallery of Flora covers and interior illustrations from R&E was reproduced in The Sweetly Diabolic…

Illustration, Table of Contents pageColumbia Records Disc Digest, February 1946

Acrylic on canvas (20″ x 16″), mid-1990s, one of countless unpublished and previously uncirculated (and mischievous and unfathomable) late-life works in the Flora archives.

Quadruped of indeterminate zoological origin; detail, Where Will It All End?, tempera on paper (1993). The full work, previously unpublished, was reproduced in The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora (page 66). The rest of the painting is no less disconcerting. Flora was 79 at the time. Many of his 1990s works betray a wobbly hand. Bold ideas continued to flow from the artist’s hallucinatory imagination, but the brushwork was less meticulous than in previous…

Spot illustration, Portrait of a Great American, a 1943 CBS radio trade circular about singer Kate Smith’s prowess raising money for war bonds. Most of the booklet’s illustrations were reproduced in The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora, but this perky flower was omitted.

Pencil sketch from the mid-1990s of a cryptic tableau later rendered as a tempera on paper entitled Bijou. The painting retained most elements and positioning, with minor changes. The cloud was omitted, the plane enlarged, and the vertical theater marquee which reads “Adelaid” was renamed “Bijou.” The painting is unpublished and uncirculated, and will be reproduced in a future anthology.

Tempera on paper, mid-1960s. The previously unpublished work was reproduced in our second book, The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora. It’s on our short list to issue as a fine art print.