Drew Struzan, The Greatest Movie Poster Artist Of All Time, Has Died At 78

Drew Struzan, the renowned artist whose iconic, hand-illustrated posters captured the crackling essence of classic movies stretching from "Star Wars" to "Harry Potter" and adorned the walls of every child who ever fell in love with cinema, is dead. He was 78 years old.

Struzan's rise to prominence as a poster artist coincided with the advent of blockbuster franchise filmmaking. He was sought out by visionary directors like George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and John Carpenter, and quickly became studios' go-to dreamweaver. Having grown up poor (he once told a journalist he learned to draw by sketching on toilet paper with a pencil), Struzan took this work gladly and never phoned in a single assignment. The keen eye and showman's flourish he brought to "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "Blade Runner" was applied with equal intensity to posters for "The Cannonball Run" and "Police Academy." All movies, to him, were full of magic.

Struzan's brilliant work wasn't limited to movie posters. In the early and mid-1970s, he caught Hollywood's eye via his indelible album covers for recording artists as disparate as The Bee Gees, Roy Orbison, and Black Sabbath. He did stamp illustrations for the United States Postal Service, logos for businesses, and numerous book covers. Once the Struzan style was established, it was instantly identifiable and wholly inimitable. No one could pencil or paint like Struzan, which makes it hard to accept that we've seen our last new illustration from the master.

Born on March 18, 1947, in Oregon City, Oregon, Struzan exhibited a talent for fine art and illustration at an early age. He matriculated to the prestigious ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California in 1965, and quickly made a decision to pursue illustration as a career because it offered the cash-strapped Struzan, who'd married young and had a child to support, the best opportunity to make a living off his abundant talent. He chose wisely.

The money wasn't exactly rolling in during the early portion of Struzan's illustration career. Even though he was knocking out vividly 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" to be one of the Top 100 Album Covers of All Time), the pay was paltry. It was right around this time that the deep-pocketed Hollywood studios came calling.

For an artist who vibed on the macabre and cosmic fantasies of 1970s music acts, Struzan was a natural fit for a Hollywood that was on the cusp of a massive paradigm shift toward gee-whiz epic sci-fi and cliffhanger-driven mega-adventures. Struzan got a foothold in the industry with some wonderfully gruesome posters for B-flicks like "Food of the Gods," "Empire of the Ants," and, best of all, "Squirm" (which also served as an early, grisly calling card for young makeup artist Rick Baker), but destiny was guiding him toward that 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 portraiture-challenged artist brought on Struzan to draw the human figures of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Han Solo. That classic poster, which harkened back to the Buck Rogers serials that inspired George Lucas' space opera by presenting itself as the kind of torn posted bill you'd find slapped up on a wall in a big city, was an instant classic of the form. Nobody but the most dialed-in movie poster nerds of the time knew who was responsible for making it so special, but filmmakers and marketing departments clocked Struzan's talent. Everyone recognized that he was the best in the business.

We first learned that Struzan was struggling with Alzheimer's on March 26, when his wife, Dylan, shared the details of his deteriorating condition in a heart-wrenching Facebook post. It was here that I learned Struzan's work was initially inspired by the Modernists, but that he was also sparked by Impressionist and Renaissance masters. He was, in a way, the movies' Michelangelo, treating each film, be it "The Thing," "Back to the Future" or "D.C. Cab," like it was worthy of its own "The Last Judgement."

Struzan's work was so brilliantly particular and transporting that the directors of the movies he helped to promote became some of his biggest fans. Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Guillermo del Toro have all sung his praises throughout the years. In a video recorded for the concert celebration "The Magnificent Movie Poster World of Drew Struzan" in 2017, Spielberg told the artist:

"You have so well crystalized, memorialized our movies in this great still poster art we've all been blessed with over the years. From Star Wars to Indiana Jones, you have been so much a part of how our films are represented to the world based on your snapshot and vision of what those movies have meant to you, and how, as an artist, you're able to transfer that brilliantly into amazing collective compositions with color and style. Your art is your art. Nobody has ever done anything before the way you do."

Struzan connected powerfully with millions of movie fans who loved cinema as much as he did. He fired our imaginations like none 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 stare at the poster and try to recall everything about the film. And it just jogged my imagination. It made me want to be a part of that world and — here I am, several movies in."

I vividly remember doing this throughout the summer of 1984 with Struzan's epic poster for Joseph Ruben's "Dreamscape." Any movie that could pull that art out of the master had to be worth my time — and it very much was. I am so very sad that we'll never see a new Drew Struzan poster, but, oh, what wonders he left us. 

Let us strive to honor the words that grace the front page of his website: "Pursue peace, pursue kindness."