Boris Vallejo: Diva
(1983 - Publicness-Zoom)

As I write this, this book isn't really that available in the American market. It is a bit better presentation of Vallejo's work than THE FANTASTIC ART OF BORIS VALLEJO, but that still leaves the other six books of paintings that scored even higher than that book (TWIN VISIONS, IMAGINISTIX, DREAMS, TITANS, FABULOUS WOMEN and ULTIMATE COLLECTION). So, there are 44 large color reproductions here, about half of which don't appear in the six better books, but to be fair, most of those do get collected in some of the other lower-scoring Vallejo collections found in this country that, if you like this art, you are going to get anyway. With that said, there are about ten paintings here that are not seen in any other collections. The book is larger in size, roughly 13.5 by 9.5 inches, and the colors seem sharp & clear. There's a casual photo of Vallejo and, interestingly, there's also one of the model, Danielle Anjou, that he posed so much. The works, from the late 1970s and early 1980s, represent the fantasy and sword & sorcery realm that he was quickly becoming known for, as well as a healthy sampling of his science fiction and, to a lesser extent, his regular illustration. While there's lots of barbarian flesh on display, almost everyone is clothed, at least a bit. Most of the work is presented with a page dedicated to an art piece (many times a full-bleed) across from a blank page containing only the title - there are then a few strange instances where the pages across are taken up with another painting, leaving both works uncaptioned. There are also eight pages of French text. The captioned titles are in English, but none are actually the titles that these paintings are known by now. Because of the current hard-to-get nature of this book, I'm leaving off adding it to the discussions of Vallejo's other books on The List.