Conan the Destroyer Painting Goes for $1.5 Million
The 1971 painting by fantasy artist Frank Frazetta sold just two months after the Pennsylvania artist's death.
Frank Frazetta was a favorite artist of my youth for his fantastical depictions of mostly nude women, such as Vampirella and his mostly nude men such as Conan. There were a number of paintings of nudes.
As time went by I came to appreciated more than the artful rendering of the human form and found that I liked his animals and skies and weapons as well. He was also a bit of an inspiration, here was someone making a living by bringing dreams to life.
His wonderfully out of place Molly Hatchet album covers were a lot of fun as well. Flirting with Disaster is a country rock album with a musclebound Thor striding forward with a look of grim determination on his face.
He also did a number of movie posters, including Clint Eastwood's The Gauntlet and the original Yours, Mine, and Ours. He started out doing a lot of characterture work, one of his more famous images being one of Ringo Starr he did for Mad Magazine. His first few commercial works were more cartoonish and less epic and heroic.
The $1.5 million dollar sell of Conan the Destroy is reputedly the highest price paid for work done by Frank Frazetta. Once an artist dies their works are usually more valuable. Paintings and sketches by Frank Frazetta will likely start showing up in more auctions as people try cash in. A recent auction saw Frank Frazetta's artwork from Weird Science Fantasy #29, from 1955, sell for $380,000.
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