Showing posts with label Louis Ferstadt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Louis Ferstadt. Show all posts

23 February 2018

Fine Ferstadt

We've been looking a bit at the comic book work of Louis Goodman Ferstadt over the last couple weeks. Ferstadt was also known as a muralist, painting for the WPA and for the World's Fair, most notably. He also painted in watercolours and oils, and his works can still occasionally be found for sale in galleries.

Some paintings:

Night Life

Park Pond

Seated Figure

Untitled (Protection Of The Child By The Child Protection Act)

Untitled Watercolour

Untitled Watercolour

Painting Of A Drag Queen

Fanciful Landscape

...and some murals...

Greatest Show On Earth



You probably knew we were going to get to an odd bit along the way, and we have arrived at the Lost Murals. The large panel we see Ferstadt painting in the 3 images below, and the smaller panel that follows, were intended to hang in the WPA Director's office. That never happened, and the murals disappeared and were lost. It has been speculated that this was due to Louis's work in the 1930s, doing cartoons for the Daily Worker. Political backlash being the likely culprit for whatever happened to the lost paintings.



Radio Service To The Public


Unfortunately, i've been unable to find any of those Daily Worker comics.
But i'll keep looking...

EDIT: Oops - forgot the colour mural image:

Farm Tragedy

all art by Louis Goodman Ferstadt

22 February 2018

Looking For Lou

Louis Ferstadt is not the easiest artist to follow. Not only did artists often go uncredited in his day, but he also worked under a variety of names, or even just letters. When credited, he can be found as Louis Ferstadt, Ferstadt, or just Lou or Looey, or even just LF or L. He can also be found under the name Lew Howe, or a couple of names completely unrelated to his own.

Ferstadt can be found drawing Blue Beetle as Otis -


More famously, you can find him working as E.E. Hibbard on The Flash (apologies for the grainy microfiche source) -


As one might surmise, finding Ferstadt can be a bit of a quest.

pages by Louis Ferstadt from Blue Beetle #44 and Flash Comics #44 (1946, 1943)

21 February 2018

73 Year Old Quickie

 Most of the work we've seen here recently from Louis Ferstadt has been from overtly cartoon-y humour comics. But he was also known for a variety of action/adventure strips, working under a variety of names. Here's another quickie post sample, the now long-forgotten The Deacon and Mickey series appearing in Cat-Man back in the 40s -


As mentioned, however, he worked under a variety of names, and his work was seen on some big name heroes, too...

pages by Louis Ferstadt from Cat-Man #27 (1945)

20 February 2018

Louis Getting Looney

Having a bit of trouble getting outside of my head. Just a short post to keep a hole in the wall.

Louis Ferstadt wasn't always the greatest story teller - by which i mean his layouts sometimes lacked a natural flow for the eye of the reader. Of course, a lot of the visual language and common tricks to keep the page easy to follow were still being developed back then.

On the up side of that aspect of his work, his pages were rarely dull and sometimes imaginatively energetic.



pages by Louis Ferstadt from Doll Man #7 (1943)