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This is a special one for me, because I place Juan Gimenez as 1 of my Top 5 Favorite Artists of All Time.
Juan Antonio Giménez Lópezwas born in Mendoza, Argentina. He finished his high school education as an industrial designer. He attended the National University of Cuyo’s School of Arts and Design followed by the Academy of Fine Arts in Barcelona. His early professional career was spent in advertising, with writing and drawing comics as a side activity, he eventually moved into comics as a full-time profession by his thirties.
He started getting his own stories published when he was sixteen years old in Argentina magazines Frontera, Misterix and Hora Cero. He published his first French release Leo Roa (The Starr Conspiracy) in 1979.
In 1980, he designed the “Harry Canyon” segment of the film Heavy Metal. During the 1980s, he collaborated with several European magazines, including Josep Toutain’s Spanish edition of 1984, the French Métal Hurlant and the Italian L’Eternauta magazines, experimenting with graphical and narrative innovations.
His most famous collaborations was with Alejandro Jodorowsky for the popular Metabarons comic series which started in 1992 and ran through 2003 which was published by Humanoids. The work was based on characters that had appeared in Jodorowsky’s and Jean ‘Moebus’ Giraud’s The Incal, and adapted elements that Jodorowsky had been planning to use in a film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune. (Go watch the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune on PLEX)
Giménez’ art for the series was praised for spanning the vast vision and range that Jodorowsky had set up. Jodorowsky said on Giménez’s death: “I closely collaborated with Juan Giménez for 10 years and together, we created The Metabarons saga. What facilitated my task as we offered him to work on the complex world of the Metabarons was that he already embodied the immortal No-Name, the last Metabaron. In my unconscious, Juan Giménez cannot die. He will continue on, drawing like the master warrior that he was.”
Juan Gimenez was a warrior. His art is striking to see. His women are equally beautiful as they are violently dangerous. His men are the same. His storytelling will get you up close and personal with the characters, uncomfortably so, but then srtike out and be as vast as the space battles he’s depicting. It’s glorious. The Metabarons is biblical to me. Biblical in the sense that if I’m working on something and I can’t figure out a transition, or pose, or even some dialogue, The Metabarons is what I open up to answer those questions. On it’s own, it’s simply a triumph of comic art. Exquisitely crafted and made, I cannot recommend it enough. I never got to meet him face to face, but I did have the rare opportunity to share a couple of emails with him before he passed. He was very gracious and nice. I really wish I could have gotten to tell him how much his art meant to me, face-to-face.
His life and legacy live on at his website;
Check this video out of Juan’s studio space in Barcelona, Spain.
