Filed Under: "architecture"

Jim Flora Art has released a limited-edition, archival-quality fine art print of a 1960 Flora painting entitled Big Evening. The hyperactive tableau depicts a cavalcade of misshapen, multi-eyed mutants with bonus body parts. People just like you! The work was produced in an edition of 25. Nine were sold in the first two days after release, our most successful new print launch.

Just released: a new Flora fine art print. The Big Bank Robbery (edition of 30) was reproduced from an undated tempera on board that reflects the nuances of Flora’s mid-1960s style. (The title was handwritten on the reverse.) The three-tiered tableau depicts colorful Flora mayhem: inscrutable monsters with misshapen features, Lego architecture, bug-eyed buildings, gumdrop color fills, and—yes—a bank robbery.

We’re not sure what this commercial illustration (ca. 1960) was intended to depict, because we don’t know the nature of the assignment or the client. Rather than impose a narrative, click on thumbnail to view enlarged image, create your own storyline, and post it in the Comments. If you happen to have a magazine tearsheet of this illo, please advise so we can settle all arguments before things get out of hand (which is, actually,…

Tempera and pencil on paper, early 1960s. Another element of a large (16-1⁄2″ x 13-3⁄4″) work partially glimpsed here, and fully revealed in our forthcoming omnibus, The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora. Above detail represents about one-sixth of the complete work.

Detail, The Depot Fire, tempera on paper, 1963. This is about one-third of the entire work, which will be fully reproduced in our forthcoming book, The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora. We reviewed printer’s proofs of the pages this week, and the book is on schedule for publication by Fantagraphics in August or September.

Paris had this unnamed gargantuan invader. In the foreground, a Van Dyke-bearded, top-hatted anatomical spare part flees from impending carnage, his method of self-propulsion unknown. Spot illustration, Columbia Coda, Nov-Dec. 1943, having something to do with composer Frederick Delius—but after reading the booklet’s accompanying text, we’re not certain what.

Spot illustration, “College: Whether to Go / Where to Go,” Mademoiselle, 1953

Pen & ink on sketch pad paper, early- to mid-1990s

Detail, Peter and the Wolf album promotion,Columbia Coda, January 1953. Wolf on lunch break.

“Jim Flora’s vacation is over & he could use some new money. Why not buy a drawing now! And make him feel better fast! Telephone Jim Flora at PLaza 5-9832.” Text and images: undated business card, probably shortly after Flora’s 1951 return to the US from Mexico. Technically he wasn’t on “vacation”—Flora and wife (and two young kids) lived in Taxco for 15 months as artmaking ex-pats. Upon returning, Flora had to hustle for freelance…

Detail, The First Five Years, acrylic on wood, ca. early 1970s. The second of six horizontal tiers depicting incidents during the artist’s childhood. Exactly what these figures represent—good question.

Spot illustration, Coda, June 1943