Filed Under: "biography"

Robert Lowry (1919-1994) would turn 90 today. Don’t expect a presidential proclamation in commemoration of this troubled man’s legacy. However, we salute the Little Man Press writer/editor for changing the course of Flora’s career, and probably for influencing his art. It all began one day in 1938 when the volatile literary turbine accosted Flora on the Art Academy of Cincinnati campus and demanded the undergrad illustrator serve as art director for his fledgling independent press…

Flora would have turned 95 today. His centennial is on the horizon. The above tempera and pencil illustration on card stock, found in the archives, dates from the early- to mid-1940s, the original purpose unknown. The re-purposing is known: Happy Birthday, Mr. Flora. From “the editors.”

“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.

Pen and ink, 1998. One of several works by Flora with this title, in various media, rendered in the final years of his life. On this date ten years ago, James Flora passed away at age 84. Nine days later the New York Times published an obit by Steven Heller. I posted a tribute at the WFMU blog, citing Flora’s posthumous contributions to the station’s visual identity.

Producer/writer Bill Bernal was a dear friend of Jim Flora. In an autobiographical reminiscence penned in 1987, Flora recalled an intercession by Bernal that upscaled one of the artist’s less successful children’s books: In 1961 Leopold, the See-through Crumbpicker was published. It did not make much of a splash. It was illustrated differently than my other books and that may have been a mistake. I tried to see and do the illustrations as a child…

Update: Two prints sold. Edition now available at JimFlora.com. Now listed on eBay: a limited-edition, archival-quality fine art print of an uncirculated 1963 Flora tempera painting, Back to Bellefontaine. Flora was born in Bellefontaine, Logan County, Ohio, in 1914, and lived there until 1934, when he enrolled at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Only 25 prints were produced for this edition. Prints #25/25 and 24/25 are being offered at the launch price of $200/ea. Prices…

My article about Flora which appeared in the August 2007 issue of Juxtapoz is now posted at JimFlora.com. Two footnotes:1) Typos and lamentable editorial “improvements” in the print version have been emended;2) Since the Flora works which illustrated the print version are already prominently displayed elsewhere on the site, I substituted new (and in some cases previously uncirculated) images.

Mount Adams Winter Scene (1937) was painted by Flora while studying at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and is the only existing color work from his academy days. It may, in fact, be the earliest existing Flora work—period. (There are undated student-era sketches.) The style, of course, does not reflect Flora’s future direction. At the academy he was training to be a fine artist, and such were his aspirations. It’s ironic that in the depths…

A rare early 1940s relief print of a Jim Flora woodcut, printed by the artist over 60 years ago, is now being auctioned on eBay by the late artist’s family. The auction closes on May 25. The untitled, unsigned and undated work reflects Flora’s early 1940s style, when many of his paintings, sketches and commercial illustrations featured disconnected body parts and pulled-apart faces linked with pin-lines, like a Calder mobile. Flora learned woodcutting at the…

Year Zero in the Flora Revival was 1992 when Michael Bartalos cold-called the 78-year-old artist to ask about his 1940s and ’50s album cover illustrations, which evoked a mothballed era to the robust, productive retiree. Recalling Mike’s curiosity, Flora later said, “I felt like a fossil that had just been dug up.” Thus began the archaeology, which continues to unearth ancient marvels. The above flashbulb-bleached vignette was snapped at A-D Gallery in June 1943 during…

Along with beasties, boppers and boats, trains were a perennial Flora motif. During the Great Depression he defrayed his tuition costs for the Art Academy of Cincinnati by working the moon-tan shift at a railyard. His uncle Charlie Royer (sketched below in the early 1990s, some sixty years later) was an engineer. Flora wrote in 1988: My uncle John Royer was night foreman of the Cincinnati Railroad Terminal Roundhouse. He was able to get me…