The Paperback Art of James Avati Piet Schreuders and Kenneth Fulton, Preface by Stanley Meltzoff. Donald M Grant, 2005. James Avati (1912-2005) earned renown as a pre-eminent paperback cover artist in an illustrious 40-year career that began during the paperback revolution of the 1950s. Among the myriad softcover books that packed the racks at newstands, Avati's covers stood out. They were - and remain - compelling and potent: teens on the threshold of adulthood, tight-lipped city dwellers, ruined farmers, amorous couples, comic rogues, failed husbands and wives, happy campers.
His work helped popularise the literature of Erskine Cauldwell, William Faulkner, Louis Bromfield, and many others. His genius lay in evoking emotion - tension, humour, avarice, compassion, suggestiveness, yearning, mischief and a score of other feelings - into the faces and postures of characters not more than two inches high. He often achieved his extraordinary results by using family members as models, as well as friends and passers-by. Many Avati canvases, lost for years, have been salvaged from publishers' warehouses and located in private collections, and this book brings together a choice selection from four decades of his work. 199 pages. Soft Cover Full Colour 8" x 11" (20cm x 28cm) ISBN: 1880418711
Click for pages 92 & 93. You might also be interested in: MAD Cover to Cover 48 Years, 6 Months & 3 Days of Mad Magazine Covers
Frank Jacobs (commentary). Watson Guptill, 2000. By 'The Usual Gang of Idiots' with a running commentary by Frank Jacobs. Collected here for the first time
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