Thole, Karel
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Artist.
Working name of Dutch illustrator Carolus Adrianus Maria Thole (1914-2000), long resident in Milan. After artistic training in Amsterdam at the Rijksmuseum's State Drawing School, Thole worked in the Netherlands until 1958, when he and his family moved to Milan, Italy. There he began painting book covers for the Italian publishers Mondadori and Rizzoli, and by the 1970s, he was regarded as a dominant figure in European sf illustration, largely due to his widely admired covers for the Italian magazineUrania (and its book-format offshoots) and the German publisher Heyne. During this decade, he also began to receive assignments from the American publishersAce Books andDAW Books, and the British sf imprint Orbit. Thole continued working full-time until 1986, when problems with his vision forced him into partial retirement; occasional covers nevertheless continued to appear.
Overall, Thole's work may be the most sophisticatedly surreal in sf art, and it is not absurd to compare it with that of Max Ernst (1891-1976), Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) or René Magritte (1898-1967), all of whom are visible influences. Symbolic and dreamlike, his covers can seem more evocative than the stories they illustrate, often juxtaposing large human faces, strange beings, and mysterious structures. It is hard to single out noteworthy examples, but considering his work for English-language publishers, one might note two striking covers for Daw's series of author anthologies: forThe Book of A. E. van Vogt (1972), he painted a woman wearing sunglasses standing in a fantastic futuristic city, and forThe Book of Philip K. Dick (1973), a little man standing on a table covered with enigmatic symbols. One might also praise his amazing cover for the 1973 translation of Paulvan Herck'sSam, of de Pluterdag (1968; trans Danny De Laet and Willy Magiels asWhere Were You Last Pluterday?1973), combining a parade of little green men, a woman whose face is split into young and aged halves, a woman stepping into a calendar, a man holding and pointing at what looks like a tiny boat, and another brooding man adjacent to his mirror image.
Among other honours, Thole was given a Special Award at the 1973Worldcon in Toronto and received threeLocus Award nominations for Best Professional Artist in 1973, 1974, and 1975, when he was most active as an artist for American publishers. No English-language compilations of his paintings have been published, but such a book, listed below, was published in Italy and quickly translated into German. [PN/JG/GW]
Carolus Adrianus Maria Thole
born Bussum, North Holland, Netherlands: 20 April 1914
died Cannobio, Italy: 26 March 2000
works
- Manuale dell'Ignoto: La Pittura Fantascientifica di Karel Thole ["Manual of the Unknown: The Science Fiction Art of Karel Thole"] (Milan, Italy: Mondadori,1981) [graph: edited by Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini: pb/Karel Thole]
- Visionen des Unwirklichen: Die phantastichen Bilder des Karel Thole ["Visions of the Unreal: The Fantastic Paintings of Karel Thole"] (Munich, Germany: Heyne,1982) [graph: translation of the above: pb/Karel Thole]
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