This is an awesome oil painting by German illustrator Heinrich Kley. I believe it is titled "The Race".
Most of us know Kley from his delicious pen and ink drawings of anthropomorphic animals, delicate nudes or nightmarish visions. But he also did a lot of color work,
some realistic, some set in a fantasy world like this one.
Frank Thomas was a big admirer of Kley's work. After all, Walt Disney and Kley did the same thing: They both showed what implausible characters and situations could look like in a totally believable way.
Incredible. Never knew Kley painted either.
ReplyDeleteI love paintings that set one's imagination ablaze. Kley's THE RACE is definitely one of them. Awesome, indeed!
ReplyDeleteFantastic! Years before H R Giger, too!
ReplyDeleteAs you know Walt had a huge collection of Kley drawings that hung in Disneyland's Club 33. He once said: "Without the wonderful drawings of Heinrich Kley, I could not conduct my art school classes for my animators."
Those drawings are now in the Disney Family Museum in SF where there is an exhibition of them until September.
Brian, I have seen the collection, it is breathtaking. There are many individual illustrations as well as complete sketchbooks,
Deletenever seen before.
Mr Deja, I would like to know if you have anything to with the restauration of the disney films when they are released in blu-ray???
ReplyDeleteDo you like the results???
best from Rio. :)
I was involved in the restauration of Sleeping Beauty, Snow White,
DeletePinocchio, Dumbo and Fantasia.
I think they look great on blu-ray.
ME TOO!! THANKS!!!
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAgain, love when your posts introduce artists' work to me :D
ReplyDeleteAndreas: As a result of you posting this Heinrich Kley drawing, I ordered a couple of books off Amazon.com of Kley's paintings/sketches/drawings. In short, thanks! :)
ReplyDeleteIt's strange that Kley only drew in that fantastic style for a short while, then turned to drawing landscapes and architecture. Do you happen to know what prompted him to make that decision, Andreas? (I have the recent biography on Kley, but it's all in German!) I'm always fascinated with artists who totally reinvent themselves. Tenggren did that too.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I know Kley started to do the fun pen and ink stuff for the amusement of his wife. The architectural renderings were his bread and butter.
DeleteTry and see the Kley exhibit currently at the W.Disney Family Museum. It is all great, unpublished work.
If you google Kley, you will find a lot of great stuff.
ReplyDeleteAnd there are two inexpensive Dover books on his pen and ink work:
The drawings of Heinrich Kley
More drawings by Heinrich Kley
Andreas:
ReplyDeleteCool painting Haven't seen much color from Kley. Hope to make it up to SF to see the exhibition but not sure if it will work out. Do they publish catalogues of their exhibitions, specifically this one?
JM
I am pretty sure there is no catalogue.
DeleteBut I will have a few more great color Kleys coming up.
Andreas:
ReplyDeleteI spoke with Rick Hoppe recently about a book I'm publishing on Kley, and he said you owned several originals (as this blog attests!). I am closing in on finishing a two-volume set on Kley, and am looking to include as many "new" pieces as possible (in fact, of the 400 images I will include in these books, none of them overlap with any of the other Kley collections to date). I've been working closely with Alexander Kunkel on these books (who wrote the catalog for the recent Munich exhibition), and I'll be including three different essays in English by him in my Kley volumes.
Any chance you could contact me about this project? I'd love to discuss it with you!
Thanks for an awesome blog!
--Joe Procopio
www.LostArtBooks.com