Basil Gogos

Basil Gogos
Gogos at the 2015 East Coast Comicon in Secaucus, New Jersey
Born	Egypt
Nationality	Greek
Known for	Painting, Drawing,
Notable work	Famous Monsters Of Filmland
Awards	Monster Kid Hall Of Fame Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards

Basil Gogos is an American illustrator best known for his portraits of movie monsters which appeared on the covers of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine in the 1960s and 1970s.

Basil Gogos was born to a Greek family living in Egypt. Gogos was 16 years old when he and his family immigrated to the U.S. Interested in art from a young age, Gogos spent his early adult years working at various jobs and studying art periodically with the goal of eventually becoming a fine artist. Gogos attended several New York area schools including The National School of Design, The Phoenix School of Design and The School of Visual Arts. While attending the Art Students League of New York, Gogos had his greatest artistic growth studying with noted illustrator Frank J. Reilly. After winning a competition at the school sponsored by Pocket Books, Gogos began his professional career with the cover painting for a western paperback novel called Pursuit published in 1959.

During the 1960s, Basil Gogos provided a steady stream of illustrations for a variety of New York-based publications. The majority of his work during this period was for men's adventure magazines for which he painted many scenes of World War II battles, jungle perils and crime as well as cheesecake portraits of beautiful women. However, Gogos' greatest impact as an illustrator was the work he did for Warren Publishing.

Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, created by publisher James Warren and editor Forrest J Ackerman, premiered in 1958 and was aimed at young readers who were then discovering the classic horror films of the 1930s and 1940s on television. The magazine's covers were usually eye-catching close-ups of horror movie characters. Gogos' first work for Warren was the cover of Famous Monsters of Filmland #9 in 1960 featuring an impressionistic portrait of Vincent Price from House of Usher painted in shades of red, yellow and green. Over the next two decades, he created almost 50 covers for Famous Monsters, many of which have become iconic images of that period. Gogos also provided cover art for several other Warren magazines including Creepy, Eerie, Spaceman, Wildest Westerns and The Spirit.