“It is with a heavy heart that I must tell you that Drew Struzan has moved on from this world as of yesterday, October 13th,” his brother, Greg Struzan, wrote in a statement.
“I feel it is important that you all know how many times he expressed to me the joy he felt knowing how much you appreciated his art,” he continued.
He designed posters for major film franchises and cherished movies including Star Wars, Back to the Future, Harry Potter, The Empire Strikes Back, The Goonies, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Thing.
Spielberg famously called him his “favourite movie artist” and confessed to experiencing pressure to “live up to the art” Struzan created.
His technique was painstaking, with every poster starting as a pencil sketch before being enhanced with airbrush acrylics and colored pencils to achieve a striking, handmade finished piece. His approach was unmistakable, focusing on capturing atmosphere and feeling instead of simply depicting a movie’s storyline.
“I wasn’t looking to tell a story. I’m looking to give a person a feeling about something they could hope for,” Struzan shared during a 2021 interview with Slash Film. “I had to do something different, and I think that the trouble with a lot of early movie posters is that they looked too much like classic illustration, which feels like it’s telling the whole story. I didn’t want to do that.
“I felt that art was more than just telling the story. In fact, telling the story in a poster is wrong for a movie.”
Prior to leaving his imprint on Hollywood, Struzan crafted album artwork for some of music’s most iconic acts, including the Beach Boys, Bee Gees, Earth, Wind and Fire, Liberace, and Black Sabbath. His design for Alice Cooper’s Welcome to My Nightmare would later earn recognition from Rolling Stone as one of the greatest album covers of all time.
Earlier this year, Struzan’s wife disclosed that he had been fighting Alzheimer’s disease. “Drew can no longer paint or sign things for you,” she shared on Facebook in March.
“He is not enjoying a well-deserved retirement but rather fighting for his life. He hears all the comments you have left here on these pages. It encourages him. At first he was able to express his thoughts but as time progressed it became infinitely more difficult.
“I rely on our 60 years of marriage working as a team to remember for him. Drew has left a strong legacy of love and joy in the form of his work. It has always been a love letter of sorts.
“His aim was to make the earth a better place in which to live by creating something beautiful. But like a flower, his season is ending,” she added.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.the-express.com ’
