Drew Struzan, the artist and illustrator who created some of the most memorable and beloved movie posters ever — Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back and Back to the Future, to name a few — died October 13, several years after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 78.
His death was announced on his official Instagram page. His wife Dylan Struzan announced in March that his health was declining, writing on Facebook: “Drew can no longer paint or sign things for you. He is not enjoying a well-deserved retirement but rather fighting for his life.”
Today’s Instagram post noted: “It is with a heavy heart that I must tell you that Drew Struzan has moved on from this world as of yesterday, October 13th. I feel it is important that you all know how many times he expressed to me the joy he felt knowing how much you appreciated his art.”
A favorite of directors Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, Struzan created the enduring images associated with some of the biggest films of the 20th century: the golden-hued assemblage of illustrations from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, centered on Harrison Ford and his fedora; the special edition of The Empire Strikes Back, giving pride of place to Darth Vader; and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, with various characters surrounding a bespectacled Daniel Radcliffe.
“Drew made event art,” Spielberg said in a statement. “His posters made many of our movies into destinations … and the memory of those movies and the age we were when we saw them always comes flashing back just by glancing at his iconic photorealistic imagery. In his own invented style, nobody drew like Drew.”
Among his many album cover illustrations was the 1975 Alice Cooper release Welcome to My Nightmare.
Struzan’s movie work, chronicled in director Erik Sharkey’s 2013 documentary Drew: The Man Behind the Poster, provided first impressions for a remarkable number of films also including Blade Runner, The Thing, The Cannonball Run, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, The Muppet Movie, First Blood, Risky Business, An American Tail and The Goonies.
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Born March 18, 1947, in Oregon City, Oregon, Struzan moved to Los Angeles at age 18 to attend the Art Center College of Design. “Because I was in L.A., I got the work that came out of Los Angeles,” he said in a 1999 interview. “It’s just because I was here and they recognized my work and offered me jobs. I took them. I was poor and hungry, and illustration was the shortest path to a slice of bread, as compared to a gallery showing. I had nothing as a child. I drew on toilet paper with pencils — that was the only paper around. Probably why I love drawing so much today is because it was just all I had at the time.”
After a stint designing album covers, Struzan began his movie poster career on such mid-1970s b-movies as Empire of the Ants and Food of the Gods. In 1977 he was recruited to paint the human characters for the poster for the 1978 re-release of Star Wars. The job launched a long-running collaboration for Lucas’ Star Wars franchise.
Once asked to choose his favorite among the more than 150 posters he designed, Struzan replied, “My favorite is always the very next one.”
Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.
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