laststandonzombieisland

Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sunday, I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, and the like that produced them.

Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of Rafael DeSoto

Born Rafael Maria de Soto y Hernandez on February 18, 1904 in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, the young man grew up drawing. In the early 1920s his family sent him to live with an uncle in New York’s Lower East Side and he soon found work in advertising without formal art training.

By 1930, DeSoto, eschewing a seminary appointment, was working for the pulp magazine clearing house of Street & Smith’s which he augmented by churning out pulp novel covers. Over the next two decades he produced works for dozens of pulps to include Ace, All Detective, Black Book Detective, Phantom Detective, The Spider, Ten Detective Aces, Terror Tales, Thrilling Detective, Western Aces, and Western Trails.

Settling in Queens, the artist was found 4F in World War II, which left him out of uniform but he nonetheless rose to the occasion and often produced very detailed military art.

By the 50s he was producing mainly book covers for Bantam, Dell, Lion, Signet, and Pocket Books and retired at age 60 to teach at State University of New York (SUNY), Farmingdale for a decade.

He died on Christmas Eve 1992 on Long Island at age 88.

His works will be signed invariably with as Raphael De Soto, Rafael M de Soto, and R de Soto. There is an excellent bio of him at Pulp Artists as well as a number of galleries an official website and his son’s site, who incidentally is an incredible artist in his own right.

Thank you for your work, sir.