R.I.P. – Legendary Horror Artist Basis Gogos!

Posted on September 16, 2017 by Michael Juvinall in Horror News // 0 Comments

This is a really sad one for us here at Horror Patch as we sadly report the death of acclaimed monster artist Basil Gogos. He passed away on September 14th at the all-too-young age of 78. There are no reports as to how he died as of now.

Gogos was best known and will always be remembered for his monster portraits that adorned the cover of Famous Monsters Of Filmland during the 1960’s through the 1980’s.

Per Wikipedia – Basil Gogos was born to a Greek family living in Egypt. Gogos was 16 years old when he and his family immigrated to the U.S. Gogos’ first work for Warren was the cover of Famous Monsters of Filmland #9 in 1960 featuring an impressionistic portrait of Vincent Price from House of Usher painted in shades of red, yellow and green. Over the next two decades, he created almost 50 covers for Famous Monsters, many of which have become iconic images of that period. Gogos also provided cover art for several other Warren magazines including Creepy, Eerie, Spaceman, Wildest Westerns and The Spirit.

Basil Gogos’ Famous Monsters cover art featured most of the classic horror characters such as The Phantom of the Opera, Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula, The Wolf Man, The Mummy, King Kong, Godzilla and The Creature from the Black Lagoon and popular horror actors like Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Vincent Price, Lon Chaney, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Gogos often captured his subjects in an array of vivid colors using a technique in which the artist imagined the character bathed in colors from multiple light sources. He enjoyed painting monsters more than most of his more conventional assignments because of the freedom he was given and because of the challenge of painting such unusual characters which he endeavored to portray as both frightening and sympathetic.

In 2005 Vanguard Productions published the coffee table book, Famous Monster Movie Art of Basil Gogos (edited by Kerry Gammill and J. David Spurlock) and in 2006 Gogos received The Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards’ special Monster Kid Hall of Fame award for his contributions to the field of classic horror.

Gogos’ art meant so much to me as a monster kid growing up in the 1970’s and seeing his art on the front of Famous Monsters magazine. His art was so full of color and really helped to cement my love of monsters through his paintings. His contribution to the world of horror is immeasurable in my opinion and yes, he was a legend in the horror community.

His artwork will go down in history as the finest monster art of all-time. The world of horror and myself will truly mourn the loss of Basil Gogos as one of the greats in his field.

He will be greatly missed and our hearts go out to Basil Gogos’ family and friends during this difficult time.