Spinoza Bernard Ginsburg
Burne Hogarth was a titan of 20th-century illustration, best known for his revolutionary work on the Tarzan comic strip and his definitive series of instructional anatomy books that remain staples in art education today. Born as Spinoza Bernard Ginsburg in Chicago, he was a child prodigy who was admitted to the Art Institute of Chicago at the age of 12.
Early Career and Tarzan
Hogarth began his professional career at just 15 years old, working as an assistant for the Associated Editors Syndicate. His big break came in 1937 when he succeeded Hal Foster as the illustrator for the Sunday Tarzan newspaper strip. While he initially followed Foster’s style, he soon injected the strip with a level of muscularity, movement, and dramatic tension that had never been seen in sequential art. His “dynamic” approach focused on the human figure in extreme motion, earning him the nickname “The Michelangelo of the Comics.”
Education and the School of Visual Arts
Beyond the drawing board, Hogarth was a passionate educator. In 1947, he co-founded the Cartoonists and Illustrators School in New York City with Silas Rhodes. As the institution grew and diversified, it was renamed the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in 1956, which eventually became one of the most prestigious art colleges in the world. Hogarth served as its administrator and primary curriculum designer for over two decades.
Legacy of “Dynamic” Instruction
In the latter half of his career, Hogarth authored a series of books that changed the way artists study anatomy. Titles like Dynamic Anatomy (1958), Drawing the Human Head (1965), and Dynamic Figure Drawing (1970) are world-renowned for their analytical and structural approach to the human form. His method focused on “masses in motion,” teaching artists to visualize the body as a series of interlocking volumes rather than static shapes.
Hogarth passed away in Paris in 1996, shortly after being honored at the Angoulême International Comics Festival. His influence persists not only in the comic book industry but also in the fields of animation, fine art, and digital illustration.
Active in others filds : Art Education (Co-founder of SVA), Author (Instructional Art Books), Theory of Art.
