Eyvind Earle

Eyvind Earle (April 26, 1916 – July 20, 2000) was an American artist, author and illustrator, noted for his contribution to the background illustration and styling of Disney animated films in the 1950s. His work on Sleeping Beauty continues to be a huge influence on me. The visual style he created for the concept art and finished backgrounds on Sleeping Beauty was a unique remixing of 50s “flat-shape” graphic design and a medieval art inspired shape-language. His later work kept going even deeper; revealing a poetic nature mysticism.

Earle was born in New York, but his family moved to Hollywood in 1918. He began painting when he was 10 years old, and had his first solo show in France when he was only 14. Amazingly, he took a cross-country bike trip making a painting each day. This is detailed in the excellent art book “Awaking Beauty: The Art of Eyvind Earle”, which is based around an exhibition from May 18, 2017-January 8, 2018 at the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco, California.














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