martes, 27 de octubre de 2009

Esteban Maroto - Wonders

Esteban Maroto is an artist that, like José González and Gonzalo Mayo was familiar to readers of Warren magazines where he displayed his particular talent for combining beautiful women with hideous creatures. His style was always very fluid and sensuous and always very European as he drew in a relistic manner and not in the cartoony style of many American artists. He also did some work for DC Comics like the four issue Zatanna mini-series of the 90's, but I digress.
This book is a very good display of his work, at 64 pages it's not by any means a comprehensive view of the artist's work but a good overview. Sadly, no work from his Warren days is included so all of the work is of the pinup variety where we get a single illustration per page unrelated to any characters or stories. But what art! Maroto is a true master of form and his women are legendarily beautiful and exotic. In fact the back cover states that the book is "Adults only" and indeed, almost ALL of the pieces feature nudity (a good thing, I always say).
The artwork is divided by theme into 6 sections, Vampires, Fantasy, Woman & Woman, Monsters & Demons, Nymphs and finally Light & Color, where we are trated to a collection of 14 gorgeous color pieces where Maroto shows he can paint with the best of them. The beginning of each chapter has a small introduction which is presented in three languages, Spanish, English and German. I bought this book on Amazon a couple of years ago, but sadly it is no longer in print and can only be found used at a very steep price.
Below are examples from each of the book's sections. Click for a bigger size. Enjoy!