ROBERT BONFILS

-Illustrator and Artist-

JUST RELEASED!  
Illustration Magazine
September 2004    
Featured cover story
about Robert Bonfils.

Robert Bonfils started his illustration career in Chicago in the mid fifties, doing various commercial art assignments such as advertisements, lunch box decorations, catalog illustrations, magazine covers, interior story illustrations, record jacket covers, and book covers.

His work during this period is covered in the Early Work section of this site.

The work he did for book covers during the late fifties and early sixties led to his being hired by the Hamling Organization as art director and cover artist. He moved to San Diego along with the rest of the organization in the early sixties and began a decade of work exclusivly for them.

During this period, he produced some of the most exciting and interesting paperback book covers ever done.

The books were published under a variety of lines within the Hamling group, such as Nighstand Books, Leisure Books, Adult Books, Candid Readers, Companion Books and others. These are all now referred to as Greenleaf Books.

These covers are covered in the Greenleaf Work section of this site.

Bob retired from doing cover art in the mid seventies and went into other business, continuing to paint fine art within the gallery community of San Diego.

This work is covered within the Fine Art section of this web site.

The cover art on Greenleaf Books was never signed so the identity of the artist who did the covers was unknown until the mid eighties when information surfaced among specialty book collectors that the artist was named Bonfils. The location of the artist was also unknown until 2002 when Bob was "found" by collectors and brought forward into the fan community.

Bob Bonfils & Earl Kemp

In 2002, Bob was reunited with Earl Kemp, an editor at the Hamling Organization, and became a public figure again, connected with the surging collecting interest in the cover images and books produced by the Hamling organization in the sixties and seventies.

Earl has been writing his on-line memoirs, called eI, where he tells the story of the Greenleaf empire and talks of Bob Bonfils throughout.

The covers done by Bob for Greenleaf Books have become favorites in certain book collecting worlds. Bob has become a special guest at collector conventions. His work has become incredibly popular and well known.

The original art for the Greenleaf covers has mostly been lost, although a few pieces have survived. There are many fans of the images that want to have an original art version of the image but are unable to obtain a vintage original.

Bob is now taking on a limited number of commissions to reproduce cover art using his current skills. Thirty years more experience shows.

This area of Bob's work is coverd in the New Commissions area of the web site.