A Video Interview with Luis Royo: TheCollector Chats with Fantasy Artist

TheCollector’s Senior Editor, Anna Sexton, and writer Greg Beyer had the pleasure of sitting down with artist Luis Royo to discuss his art, his inspiration, and his current projects. Here’s the video interview:

Luis Royo is, without a doubt, one of the most famous and successful fantasy artists today. His style is wholly unique, fusing themes of fantasy, science fiction, and eroticism with a style that exhibits a dreamlike quality and has captured the hearts and minds of his legions of admirers. His attention to detail exudes delicate aspects that accentuate softness and fragility yet also invoke a sense of beauty and power.

Hailing from Spain, Luis started exhibiting his paintings in 1972, challenging Spain’s societal norms in the process. In the 1980s, his career as an illustrator brought him incredible success, and his works became well-known in many countries, especially through publications such as Heavy Metal, Cimoc, Cómic Art, Ere Comprime, and Total Metal, not just within the pages but on many of the covers. With an immensely long list of covers to his name, Luis Royo remains one of the most prolific artists of our time.

He has had exhibitions in France, Spain, Belgium, Germany, Russia, and the USA and has won many awards. Royo’s art has appeared in many hundreds of publications, from books to magazines, tarot cards, calendars, and a vast array of other media formats. One of his biggest projects was a collaboration with his son, Romulo, in which the two artists painted the domed ceiling of a palatial house in Moscow. With a diameter of 79 feet (24 meters), this was indeed an epic undertaking that has drawn parallels to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel!

Luis and Romulo’s works are represented by the gallery Laberinto Gris, located in Zaragoza, Spain. At the time of the interview, the gallery had recently opened the Komorebi Eterno exhibition, which had been on view from April 17 to July 31, 2023. Komorebi is the Japanese term for shafts of sunlight streaming through leaves, while eterno is the Spanish word for everlasting or eternal. The idea for this exhibition was to showcase all the orientalist-themed artwork created by Luis and Romulo over the years.