Gary Panter

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Gary Panter (born December 1, 1950 in Durant , Oklahoma ) is an American comic book artist and artist.

life and work

Gary Panter was born to Mel Panter and grew up in Brownsville, Texas . Influenced by the hobby paintings of his native American father and the comic books on display in his father's shop, Panter captured a passion for American visual culture as a child.

The comix underground of the 1960s, such as Robert Crumb's work, accelerated his own breakthrough to drawing comics and his breakout from Texan Christian fundamentalism . There were also experiments with LSD in 1972. By 1974 Panter completed an art degree at East Texas State University . In the same year he also developed his later best-known comic character, Jimbo. The post-apocalyptic scenario of the Jimbo comics contains both Texan and Japanese elements, which perhaps explains why a loyal Japanese fan base gathered around Panter early on. From 1977 Jimbo episodes appeared regularly in the punk magazine "Slash" from LA , where Panter now lived. It was more or less by chance that the illustrator took over the design of record covers for the rock musician Frank Zappa . The cooperation with the mysterious underground band The Residents then offered a closer connection to the contemporary music scene .

Panter's talent got around as far as the US east coast: he finally published in Art Spiegelman's large-format magazine RAW, where he was involved in the creation of the new wave era of comics, which Panter prefers to call " postmodern ". In fact, his work mixes highly cultural styles, such as abstract expressionism and Art brut , with motifs and techniques from pop culture , such as B. 1950s adult comics and cheap Japanese horror films. Panter became known for his "snappy, torn lines", his sudden style change from picture to picture and for an expressivity rarely achieved in this genre.

In the 1980s, Panter was responsible for setting up the Pee-wee Herman TV show , winning three Emmys . He has worked as a graphic designer for Time , Rolling Stone and New Yorker magazines . He had a strong influence on the style of his friend and Simpsons inventor Matt Groening .

Panter has been married to Helene Silverman for over a decade and has lived with his family in Brooklyn since 1985 , where he was an eyewitness to the attack on the World Trade Center.

Today Panter is known as the “King of Punk Art” or “King of the Grotesque”, some even as “probably the most influential graphic artist of his generation”. In the meantime, in works such as Jimbo in Purgatory (2004) or Jimbo's Inferno (2006), he also takes up classics such as Dante , Boccaccio and Sophocles .

Publications

Awards

  • 1987: Daytime Emmy Award - Production Design for Pee Wee's Playhouse
  • 2000: Chrysler Design Award

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "Artist Bio - Gary Panter" at Fantagraphics Books , accessed September 11, 2012

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Panter, Gary
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American comic book artist, painter, graphic designer, interior designer
DATE OF BIRTH December 1, 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH Durant , Oklahoma