Boris Vallejo

Biography

Boris Vallejo rarely paints from life. He usually works from photographs of models, and in the past he often combined several shots into a single composite image; he makes his preparatory sketches in pencil or ink and paints the picture in oil on board. Some of these sketches are collected in the book “Sketchbook” (2001).

He was born on 8 January 1941 in Lima, Peru. He began to paint at thirteen, in 1954, and took on commissioned illustration quite early. He studied at the National School of Fine Arts in Lima, which he entered on a five-year scholarship, and won a prize medal there.

In 1964, at the age of twenty-three, Vallejo emigrated to the United States. Fame came quickly: he drew Tarzan, Conan the Barbarian, Doc Savage and other heroes for the covers of mass-market paperbacks. The covers were followed by commissions for film posters, advertising and designs for collectibles, among them work for the Franklin Mint, trading cards and sculpture. His paintings also appeared on album covers. In 1978 he painted a Tarzan calendar, and in 1995 his works were used in the card game Hyborian Gates. His sea serpents hang in the queue for the Loch Ness Monster roller coaster at Busch Gardens Williamsburg. He painted posters for fantasy and adventure films, from “Barbarella” (1968) to “Knightriders” (1981), “Q” (1982) and “Barbarian Queen” (1985), and for comedies: “National Lampoon’s Vacation” (1983), “European Vacation” (1985), “Nothing but Trouble” (1991).

He himself has explained his interest in the strong body by the fact that he has been a bodybuilder since the age of sixteen, and he has seen nothing strange in the nude. The figures in his paintings, half-naked men and women with swords fighting monsters, are often compared with Frank Frazetta’s; both artists at times painted the same characters. It has been written of his paintings that their illusion of volume and space makes the heroes convincing: these plainly invented creatures look as if the artist had caught sight of them in the real world. To my mind, this follows directly from his work with photographs of living models. Such frankness has also drawn plenty of critics. In his essay “There Is No Gold in the Grey Mountains”, Andrzej Sapkowski mocked publishers who chase the reader who wants Boris Vallejo on the cover, that is, half-naked bodies and armoured bras.

He has won many awards. In 1978 he received the Inkpot Award; in 1979 the British Fantasy Award for best artist (for the painting “The Amazon Princess and her Pet”) and the Locus Award for best professional artist; in 2011 the Chesley Award for lifetime artistic achievement, and in 2014 another, for best product illustration.

He often works together with the artist Julie Bell, and such paintings are signed with both names. Together they produce an annual calendar of thirteen paintings and books, including a practical guide to fantasy painting (2003), and in 2007 they jointly painted the poster for the film “Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters”. The first album of his work appeared in 1980, followed by more than a dozen further books.

In July 2026 Julie Bell announced that after more than fifty years of professional work Vallejo had stopped taking commissions. His last commercial painting was “Inferno”, on which the two of them worked for three years.