Featuring the most iconic images produced for the Star Wars universe, Star Wars Art: Posters offers a definitive visual history of this classic saga.

These, as a fan from the original trilogy, are the images that I personally most identify with George Lucas’ epic creation. Tom Jung’s action-packed theatrical poster and Roger Kastel’s beautiful, Gone with the Wind inspired painting for The Empire Strikes Back ‘are’ Star Wars. These alone capture the memories and feelings of seeing these films for the first time a long time ago… More great artwork came after them, such as pieces for The Return of the Jedi by John Alvin and Kazuhiko Sano, and Drew Struzan’s anniversary triptych; but few captured that operatic beauty of that one piece by Roger Kastel – who also provides the introduction to this book.

Although Drew Struzan got to complete his run with the prequel trilogy, The Phantom Menace also brought with a more photographic approach to poster design. With illustration in decline, it was left to the fan circuit to pick up the slack, and through designers such as Olly Moss and companies such as Mondo, a new wave of artwork arrived on t-shirts, special screenings and comic-cons.

Stylistically, it’s easy to separate these two eras in Star Wars poster art. The first created the universe for us with classical images of spectacle, atmosphere and emotion, where what followed was a post Star Wars nostalgia trip and clever mash-up of pop-culture references.

It will be interesting to see what comes next with Drew Struzan rumored to be illustrator for the new movies, but for now this is the definitive collection of Star Wars movie poster art and highly recommended.

Star Wars Art: Posters
Abrams
Hardback 180 pages
26.7 x 2.5 x 31.8 cm