Frank Frazetta Takes His Place at the Lucas Museum

A selection of Frank Frazetta collectible cards from my personal
collection, featuring several works that will be on display
at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

For admirers of Frank Frazetta, there is another reason to look forward to the opening of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles this September.

When the long-awaited museum opens its doors on September 22nd, Frazetta will be among a select group of illustrators honored with individual galleries. His gallery will showcase a selection of illustrations and book covers from the museum’s collection.

It is a fitting tribute to an artist whose influence extends far beyond the fantasy genre. With his brooding warriors, fearsome monsters, strange worlds, and voluptuous women, Frazetta helped define the visual language of modern fantasy and inspired generations of illustrators, filmmakers, comic artists, and designers.

Among the Frazetta works in the Lucas Museum collection are his magnificent 1970 cover for Edgar Rice Burroughs’s A Princess of Mars, depicting John Carter and Dejah Thoris, as well as his eerie 1980 painting Mothman.

For those of us who have long regarded his work as something more than commercial illustration, seeing Frank Frazetta given a gallery of his own in a major museum feels long overdue.