Charles Burns

Charles Burns is one of our favourite US comic book artists, born September 27, 1955 in Washington D.C. He attended the Fine Art Class of University of Washington until 1977 and afterwards studied fine arts and sculpture at Graduate School in Davis, California until 1979. When he met Art Spiegelman in 1981 a 10-years period followed during which he extensively worked for RAW magazine and found his way into comics. His cover of RAW #4 is a rare and important collectable. In the 1980s a two years stay in Italy brought him closer to European art and comics, and magazines like the german "Schwermetall" printed his stories. Charles Burns is highly influenced by the American horror comics of the 50s. His cool black and white style and his aesthetics defined by clear outlines are much appreciated by his fans and kind of unique. His trademark: strong and catchy hatching, causing a distinct feeling of light and shadow. You can feel the influence of his work as inker for which he received seven Harvey Awards between 1998 and 2006. He created his famous 12 volumes of "Black Hole" from 1993 to 2004, telling a bizarre story about a virus that causes odd physical deformities. The series started out at Kitchen Sink Press and was taken over by Fantagraphic Books with issue no. 5. The famous cover of Iggy Pop’s album "Brick by Brick" features his art and a number of magazines like TIME, Rolling Stone, Esquire and The New Yorker also printed his illustrations on their covers. Charles Burns lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. From June 7 to 10, 2012 he will be at Comic-Salon Erlangen and afterwards visit "Heimathafen Neukölln" in Berlin to talk about his work and his new book "The Colony" to a German audience.