ROYO 80´s 90´s EXHIBITION

  

  

  

 

Laberinto Gris has continued with its archival work and has expanded with this new section of the 80's and 90's Luis Royo's works made during those years. We thus offer his versatile variety of genres within his work.

From January 15 to April 15, you can enjoy the virtual exhibition that houses a wide compilation of the selected work while some of the most representative works of the artist during these decades are exhibited at the Laberinto Gris headquarters.

You can also visit us at our open day on Friday February 10 from 18h to 21h during which, at 19h the author of the work Luis Royo and the Director of the Museum of Historical Informatics Eduardo Mena will give a speech to visitors about the uniqueness of the plastic art of those years, and culminating with Royo signing his books.

 

  

   

 DIANA OF BITRU, LUIS ROYO 46 X 66 CM (18.11 X 25.98 IN)

 

In the decade of the 80s and 90s, the culture and entertainment industry resorted in a massive and renewed way to images to headline their products, to give them their own identity and differentiation. In those decades, books, comics and record covers, movies and video posters, were nourished by illustration. Those were years when digital work had not appeared yet and photography had its limitations. The brushes of some artists of these new times were put at the service of a whole new popular iconography, and a few like Luis Royo achieved international recognition with those works that over the years have become a cultural reference and also object of recognition and collection.

 

  

   

 PANIC LIGHT, LUIS ROYO 35.7 X 50 CM (14.06 X 19.69 IN)

 

The work of Luis Royo during these decades is characterized by his approach to all genres. In them there are covers of western novels, sword and fantasy, science fiction, romantic, horror videos, action... An endless journey through all possible themes and that were published throughout Europe and the U.S. They were also the years that defined his characteristic style and personality of his works. And outside the commission, in the works of those years for his first author's books, he clearly marked his plastic stamp that would consecrate him internationally as one of the basic artists of Fantasy. On both sides of the Atlantic, posters of his images flooded the walls of the rooms of a young public that identified with this new provocative and dark aesthetic, where a defiant heroine faced adversity and monsters.

  

  

 

  

 

 ROQUESONG, LUIS ROYO 68 X 48 CM (26.77 X 18.9 IN)

The exhibition will thrill the most nostalgic, who will remember not only the covers of movies, comics, books and video games, but will also be able to see again their favorite game consoles, in which they could play Turbo Girl, Navy Moves, Captain Thunder or Cozumel among others, whose iconic covers were made by Luis Royo. The well-known Spectrum or ... are part of the exhibition thanks to the association specialized in classic computing RetroAcción, which has allowed us to enrich the selection of works with these emblematic pieces.

 

 

I remember a time when video games did not have the realistic graphics that we can see in today's games. A time when video game graphic designers struggled to make a handful of pixels, with very limited colors, transport the player to remote planets, winding roads, forests riddled with dangers, or battlefields infested with fearsome enemy warriors. Adding or removing a pixel here or there made the difference between an "almost" real character or a mere monkey. Fortunately, gamers had a powerful weapon to complement those technical limitations, the best of graphics cards: their imagination.

 

And to spur that imagination, the importance of the covers of the boxes or cases that contained the video games in their commercial format (cassette tapes or, later, floppy disks). Video games were bought by admiring their covers. Unlike the posters of cinematographic creations, which include some of the most characteristic scenes or real characters, the covers of video games did not seek to show the (limited) graphics of the game once it was running, but precisely to show the idea, the context, the beauty, the horror, or the action that had inspired such a video game. It was about showing what the videogame itself could not show due to the technical limitations of the machine where it was executed. Something similar to the covers of Science Fiction books, to reach with the cover where the words could not reach.

 

And that's where professional illustrators came into play. Some videogame development companies turned to professional illustrators, usually from the world of comics, to create the magic they needed for the covers and posters of videogames. Names like Alfonso Azpiri, Luis Royo, Juán Giménez, among many others, became well known in the world of video games. And they poured all their imagination and fantasy, which was not scarce, in those covers, since then overflowing with reality, with mysterious and beautiful warriors with haughty looks, strange and intriguing landscapes never seen before, and warriors and weapons and ships, which fired the imagination of those who contemplated them. And the idea worked, boy did it work! Many of those video games would be mainly remembered for the illustrations on their cover art, rather than for the graphics or the game itself. Many gamers confessed years later that it was the cover art that was the main reason for purchasing one game or another.

 

Yes, an era long gone, when machine-generated graphics reached a level of realism unthinkable only a few years before. Now, not even in physical format, even the covers and the boxes and cases have disappeared, and the games in digital format are promoted showing their impressive graphics. But there are many of us who miss those cover illustrations that, as a prelude to what we would find in the videogame, helped enormously to enjoy them with all our senses.

 

Eduardo Mena

University Professor

RetroAcción Association

Museum of Historical Informatics of the Univ. of Zaragoza

  

  

 

  

  

 

 

  

 

  

  

  HIJO DE BAPHONET, LUIS ROYO 20 X 24 CM (7.87 X 9.45 IN)