Drew Struzan, the celebrated artist whose iconic hand-illustrated posters captured the crackling essence of classic films from “Star Wars” to “Harry Potter” and adorned the walls of every child who fell in love with cinema, has died. He was 78 years old.
Struzan’s rise to prominence as a poster artist coincided with the advent of the successful film franchise. He was sought after by visionary directors like George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and John Carpenter, and quickly became the studios’ go-to dream maker. Growing up poor (he once told a reporter that he learned to draw by drawing on toilet paper with a pencil), Struzan took the job happily and never called in a single assignment. The keen eye and showmanship he brought to “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Blade Runner” were applied with equal intensity to the posters for “The Cannonball Run” and “Police Academy.” For him, all films were full of magic.
Struzan’s brilliant work is not limited to movie posters. In the early and mid-1970s, he attracted Hollywood’s attention with his indelible album covers for artists as disparate as the Bee Gees, Roy Orbison and Black Sabbath. He has created stamp illustrations for the United States Postal Service, logos for companies, and numerous book covers. Once established, the Struzan style was immediately identifiable and completely inimitable. No one knows how to draw or paint like Struzan, which makes it difficult to accept that we have seen our last new illustration from the master.
From Squirm to Star Wars
Born March 18, 1947, in Oregon City, Oregon, Struzan demonstrated a talent for fine art and illustration from an early age. He enrolled at the prestigious ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, in 1965, and quickly made the decision to pursue a career in illustration because it offered Struzan, who was cash-strapped, married young and had a child to support, the best opportunity to make a living from his abundant talent. He chose wisely.
The money wasn’t really coming in early in Struzan’s illustration career. Although he did highly imagined album covers for Carol King, Jefferson Airplane and Alice Cooper (Rolling Stone once declared Struzan’s art for Cooper’s “Welcome to My Nightmare” one of the 100 best album covers of all time), the pay was paltry. It was around this time that the deep-pocketed Hollywood studios came calling.
For an artist who vibed on the macabre, cosmic fantasies of 1970s musical groups, Struzan was a natural fit for a Hollywood that was on the cusp of a massive paradigm shift toward epic sci-fi and cliffhanger-driven mega-adventures. Struzan gained a foothold in the industry with wonderfully gruesome posters for B-movies like “Food of the Gods,” “Empire of the Ants” and, best of all, “Squirm” (which also served as a macabre calling card for young makeup artist Rick Baker), but destiny was guiding him to this universe that existed a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
When 20th Century Fox hired David Weitzner to illustrate the poster for the 1978 re-release of “Star Wars,” the portrait-challenged artist tapped Struzan to draw the human figures of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Han Solo. This classic poster, which recalled the Buck Rogers serials that inspired George Lucas’ space opera by presenting itself as the kind of torn poster bill you would find hanging on a wall in a big city, was an instant classic of the genre. No one except movie poster enthusiasts of the time knew who was responsible for making this film so special, but filmmakers and marketing departments took notice of Struzan’s talent. Everyone recognized that he was the best in the field.
No one captured the magic of movies like Drew Struzan
We first learned that Struzan was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease on March 26, when his wife, Dylan, shared details of his deteriorating condition in a heartbreaking Facebook post. It was here that I learned that Struzan’s work was initially inspired by the Modernists, but had also been inspired by the Impressionist and Renaissance masters. He was, in a way, the Michelangelo of films, treating every film, whether it was “The Thing,” “Back to the Future” or “DC Cab,” as if it were worthy of its own “Judgement Day.”
Struzan’s work was so brilliantly idiosyncratic and transporting that the directors of the films he helped promote became some of his biggest fans. Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Guillermo del Toro have all sung its praises over the years. In a video recorded for the concert celebration “Drew Struzan’s Magnificent World of Movie Posters” in 2017, Spielberg told the artist:
“You have crystallized and commemorated our films so well in these stunning still posters that we have all been blessed with over the years. From Star Wars to Indiana Jones, you have contributed greatly to the way our films are represented to the world based on your snapshot and vision of what these films have meant to you, and how, as an artist, you are able to transfer that brilliantly into amazing collective compositions with color and style. Your art is your art. No one has ever done anything before. you do.”
Struzan established a powerful connection with millions of movie fans who loved cinema as much as he did. He has ignited our imagination like no other in his field. As “How to Train Your Dragon” director Dean DuBlois told The Hollywood Reporter in 2018, “I could go to the theater and look at the poster and try to remember everything about the movie. And it just sparked my imagination. It made me want to be a part of that world and — here I am, in multiple movies.”
I vividly remember doing this throughout the summer of 1984 with Struzan’s epic poster for Joseph Ruben’s “Dreamscape.” Any film capable of bringing out this art of the master had to be worth my time – and this a lot was. I’m so sad we’ll never see a new Drew Struzan poster, but, oh, what wonders he left us.
Let us strive to honor the words that adorn the first page of his website: “Pursue Peace, Pursue Kindness.”
