Hermann Mejia

Hermann Mejía
Born 1973
Caracas, Venezuela
Nationality Venezuelan-American
Area(s) artist

Hermann Mejía (born 1973) is a Venezuelan-born illustrator, painter and sculptor[1] living in New York City. His caricature-driven work frequently appears in MAD Magazine.[2]

Contents

Early life and education

Hermann Mejía started drawing very young, studying comics, including MAD Magazine, that had made their way to Venezuela from America, although he spoke no English at the time. He cites artists Sergio Aragonés (author of the wordless Groo the Wanderer strip) and Mort Drucker as favorites. He started collecting comics at age 13, and received his first artists' commission at 15, painting promotional graffiti for musical acts in Caracas. He studied at the Caracas Design Institute (Instituto de Diseño de Caracas), and from there went into commercial art, including the design of a series of Venezuelan postage stamps commemorating the Pope.[2]

Career

For coming in first in a cartooning contest, Mejía received a trip to New York City, where he met commercial artist George Pratt, who had been one of the judges of the contest. Pratt took Mejía to the offices of DC Comics, and Mejía received work almost instantly. Through DC, Mejía met Charlie Kochman, the Licensed Publishing editor for both DC and MAD (which was by then a publication of DC Comics), and received an assignment for the April 1997 issue.

Mejía continued working for the New-York-based Mad while continuing to live in Venezuela for the next two years. In 1999, due to the unstable political situation and crime rate in his native country, Mejía moved to the United States.[2] He received a "Best in Magazine Feature" Reuben Award from the National Cartoonists Society in 2003.[3]

Selected works

References

  1. ^ Mejía's sculpted caricature work for Mad magazine include the "Iraq War Chess Set" in issue #473 (January 2007) and the O.J. Simpson "Heistman Trophy" in issue #497 (January 2009).
  2. ^ a b c Evanier, Mark (2002). Mad Art: A Visual Celebration of the Art of MAD Magazine and the Idiots who Create It. Watson-Guptill. pp. 257–260. ISBN 0-8230-3080-6. http://books.google.com/?id=u-EKrYySQWoC. 
  3. ^ NCS Awards
  4. ^ Irvine, Alex (2008). "The Books of Faerie". In Dougall, Alastair. The Vertigo Encyclopedia. New York: Dorling Kindersley. pp. 36–37. ISBN 0-7566-4122-5. OCLC 213309015. 

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