Karel Vaca

These are the work of Czech artist and designer Karel Vaca (1919-1989). According to Terry Posters, Vaca designed 289 film posters, and many of the examples on the site look fairly rushed and/or pedestrian, but the above selection includes some of the more inspired ones. A few of his paintings can be seen here and here.

Eugene Mihaesco

Op-Ed art by the Romanian-born illustrator Eugene Mihaesco. There appears to be next to nothing by or about Mihaesco online, other than this:

Ceausescu was enraged at the drawings. In early 1989 Mihaesco's 79-year-old father Nicolae, who lives in Bucharest, was sacked from his job, isolated from his friends and ordered to rein in his "seditious" son. "I'm crushed if you go on," Nicolae told Eugene by telephone. "They will destroy me, destroy your mother." Grasping for a solution, the artist screamed at his father -- and the eavesdropping police -- "Don't tell me what to do. I disinherit you!" Children do not disinherit parents; this artist is crazy. Or so Mihaesco hoped the Securitate would think. Soon after, his father got his job back. But Nicolae Mihaescu did not understand his son's vehemence. They have not spoken since.

Klimowski On Illustration

Every profession has its ups and downs; fashions change, as do art directors. In the mid-Nineties I found I was getting fewer commissions. This made me fall back on my own experimental work, work that I had done for myself over the years. My professor, Henryk Tomaszewsky, used to refer to this kind of work as 'professional hygiene'; experimentation for its own sake. This playing with form and indulging in one's own obsessions was vital to keep work fresh and lively. Sooner or later the experimentations would find their way into commissioned work.
- Andrzej Kilimowski, On Illustration