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EDWARD GOREY

Born in Chicago in 1925, Edward St. John Gorey reputedly began drawing at the age of eighteen months. Some time later, he was drafted into the army and assigned to the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. His job there, he says, was to test poison gas.

In 1950, Gorey saw his art in print for the first time--as the September cover for the "Harvard Advocate," his college publication, and endpapers for Merrill Moore's "Illegitimate Sonnets."

A founding member of the Poets Theater (with Frank O'Hara, V. R. Lang, John Ashbery, and Alison Lurie), Gorey designed sets for the first play the group presented--O'Hara's "Try, Try" (1951). Between 1953 and 1963, Gorey worked as a staff artist and art director for Doubleday and Random House. His "Doubtful Guest" was published by Diogenes Verlag of Zurich, the first of many of the artist's works to be published by that company. In 1965, Gorey held his first major exhibition at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California.

When Gorey's first anthology, "Amphigorey," was published in the early seventies, it was chosen by "The New York Times Book Review" as one of the five most noteworthy art books of the year. Gorey designed sets and costumes for the 1977 Broadway production of "Dracula." His costume design earned him a Tony award. In 1980, an animated sequence of Gorey's work was used for the first time on the PBS television show "Mystery!" Nineteen years later, the series and the sequence are still going strong.

Edward Gorey left New York for good in 1983. He lived in Massachusetts with six cats and continued to produce his darkly hilarious work until his death, April 15, 2000. Gorey's drawings are widely collected and exhibited at notorious institutions throughout the world.

Drawn from "Goreyography" by Henry Toledano (Word Play Publications, San Francisco, 1996).

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