Field Notes: Heinz Edelmann, Graphic Artist

I was originally going to write about Peter Max, who I thought had done the Beatle's Yellow Submarine art.  However, when I looked it up, I found that I was wrong -- a graphic artist named Heinz Edelmann had done it, and that I wasn't the only one who had made the Max assumption.  Many articles referred to the "Max-influenced" work that Edelmann did on Yellow Submarine, and the similarities are very easy to see:

Peter Max's "Border Crossing 3"
from http://rogallery.com/Max_peter/prints/1970/max-border_crossing-3.htm

Heinz Edelmann, still from 'Yellow Submarine'

Edelmann was born in 1934 in Czechoslovakia and upon graduating in the 1950s from the Academy of Fine Arts in Dusseldorf, he began work as a freelance designer, illustrator, animator and teacher.  He was known for combining Impressionist and Expressionist elements with humor and irony.  In the 1960s, he was experimenting with updated Art Nouveau styles when his work was spotted by Al Brodax, the producer of an animated Beatles cartoon series for children.  He was subsequently hired to produce the artwork for the Yellow Submarine film, which would become his hallmark.  

He continued to work in graphic arts up until April 2008, about a year before his death in 2009.  Some other examples of his work:

Book Cover for the German edition
of "Lord of the Rings"
from http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/Heinz+Edelmann/page/2/1125260460

Movie Poster
http://8ate.blogspot.com/2009/07/rare-vintage-heinz-edelmann-1967.html

Art Nouveau's influence today

This week I got to play with a friend's large stash of glossy, high-end fashion magazine collection while I was helping her with a collage.  I was immediately struck by how much some of the Art Nouveau sensibilities have snuck back into our advertising lately (last couple of years), especially the work of graphic artist, Ramid Malinic.  After finding out his name when I was researching the Smirnoff ad (middle), I looked for more of his work.  A small sampling is shown below:

 The flourishes, definite nature themes and swirls are definitely taken from the Art Nouveau.  Ramid has replaced the typical female form with product, updated the colors and modernized the stylings but the influence is there.  I'm not the only one who has noticed this -- while looking at his work on the web, many of the sites I visited commented on this.

This style has also crept back into other advertisements, with the advent of computer graphics.  Flourishes and swags, birds and flowers, are now layered in the background of many ads.  Once I made this connection, I'm now looking at ads differently -- its like playing "where's waldo" when looking through magazines.