Jim Flora
1940s Album Art Innovator By Jim AllenHis bold, freewheeling style broke new ground and created the perfect visual complement to the music of the era
Jim Flora is best known for his album-cover illustrations of the 1940s and ‘50s, where his bold, freewheeling style broke new ground and created the perfect visual complement to the music of the era, especially the jazz albums his work most often adorned. Flora's images burst with vibrant colors and exuberant activity, and his highly stylized, often cartoony approach - filled with sharp angles, cubist sensibilities, and intimations of constant motion - dovetailed perfectly with a period in American popular culture where Alex Steinweiss (under whose direction Flora started his career), Jackson Pollock, and bebop were all in the forefront of the collective consciousness. Flora's work extended far beyond album covers, though; he worked extensively in graphic illustration for magazines and newspapers, and even illustrated a series of children's books. Flora retired from his graphics work in the late ‘70s and concentrated on painting, working consistently until his death in 1998 at the age of 84. His influence on contemporary illustrators is immense, and three books of his work were released in the 2000s.
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