Tony Viramontes was one of the defining fashion illustrators of the 1980s. His career was all too brief (he died aged just 31) but his hedonistic, sexy, and unapologetically glamorous images caught the spirit of the times in a way that was unique.
Tony Viramontes was born to Mexican parents in West LA, in 1956. His early obsession with bull fighting, passionate interest in fashion, and preternatural gifts as a draughtsman coalesced to produce a thrillingly unrestrained drawing style. He trained at the Art Centre College of Design in LA before heading to New York where he attended first FIT, then Parsons. In New York he came to the attention of Antonio Lopez, who was an early champion, as was the designer Hanae Mori. In 1983 he moved to Paris, where his career went into orbit. He worked for Vogue, Per Lui and La Mode en Peinture; produced ad campaigns for Valentino, St. Laurent and Montana and exhibited (and partied) throughout Europe and in Japan.
He kept up a frenetic pace “I look for new ideas because I always want to be in a state of creative anxiety and insecurity. If I feel sure of myself I cannot be creative” he said. He began to experiment with photography and with collage, and his directional cover for Janet Jackson’s 1985 album Control, heralded a bold new phase. But, by then, Viramontes, was already ill – an early victim of the AIDS epidemic. Among his last projects was the supervision of a dazzling monograph (that would be published posthumously in Japan.) He died in Los Angeles in 1988, leaving a legacy- literally thousands of drawings – of extraordinary power and attack.
