- 2020 Hand Signed by Michael Wittman, and numbered e.a.
- 3D-Constructed Print on Hahnemühle Velvet Paper
- Paper size approximately: Width: 17.5 inches Height 24 inches (44.45cm x 60.96cm)
- In excellent condition, has never been framed. Has some creases/handling on edges/corners which will be barely noticeable when framed!
- In this limited edition, the figures were lined and then raised and attached to the sheet. This creates a fascinating 3-D effect.
About the artist: "The young man who read comics and nonfiction books in Vienna "back then" dreamed of imaginary worlds like so many others. In the meantime, he has been able to realize some of his dreams. In his drawings, he implements fantastic scenes from fantasy and SF novels; at the beginning of the 80s for the fantasy series MYTHOR, today for PERRY RHODAN. Born in Vienna in 1959, Michael Wittmann has been a comic fan since his earliest youth. "The American superheroes in particular impressed me as a child," he recalls today. "First the old Batman stories by Bob Kane, later Jack Kirby's Fantastic Four." The teenager read series like PERRY RHODAN or the then new fantasy series DRAGON. Since references to the fantasy club Follow regularly appeared on the readers' pages of the DRAGON magazines, Michael Wittmann became curious. He wrote to the association and included some - as he says today - "amateurish drawings of heroic swordsmen." In response he got some fan magazines and information about Follow and the fandom. A relatively typical "fan career" began: Wittmann became a member of Follow and soon also attended the Viennese SF regulars' table, which was quite active in the mid-1970s. His drawings appeared in fanzines like Andromeda, Follow or Magira, he wrote articles and attended cons.
The Viennese author Ernst Vlcek brought him to professional work: »In 1980 Ernst drew my attention to MYTHOR at a meeting of the Viennese SF group. Ernst had just taken charge of this series and knew the editors wanted to try new interior illustrators. He asked me if I could draw a white wolf, a white unicorn and a white eagle. I could - and that was my ticket as an interior illustrator.« Wittmann provided the illustrations for several MYTHOR novels until the series was discontinued. This was followed by fruitful work as a comic artist, mainly for the specialist magazine Comic Forum, which appears in Vienna. There were a number of exhibition participations and individual exhibitions. But that's not all: "Influenced by the didactic concept of the writing workshops, I began to offer a comic workshop at adult education centres. At the request of teachers, I held comic workshops with students in schools.« Wittmann did not lose sight of his "normal middle-class career". He completed his civil service at the Vienna Red Cross, completed his law studies and entered the federal service. To this day, he works in changing areas as a lawyer in the Austrian ministerial bureaucracy. He lives in Vienna, as he notes wryly, "along with my wife and an ever-growing collection of printed paper."
The passion for comics of his youth has long since turned into a comprehensive interest in fine art and illustration. »I can get enthusiastic about pictures like hardly anything else. I was particularly impressed by the illustrators of past centuries, of which Gustave Doré is probably the best known, the masters of the Japanese color woodcut and early illustrated humor magazines such as Fliegen Blatt and Simplicissimus. These historical role models probably influenced me just as much as the American comic artists of the 1960s and 1970s.« For some time, Wittmann has also been trying to use his talent for drawing commercially. Since 1996, comics and cartoons have been created for customer magazines, employee magazines and industry newspapers, caricatures of people present at company parties and trade fairs, layouts and storyboards for the advertising industry. The Viennese has also rejoined the active fan scene. He's back at Follow and likes going to the PERRY RHODAN regulars' table in Vienna. Which closes another circle: Even if Wittmann prefers Philip K. Dick and J. G. Ballard as his favorite science fiction authors, the PERRY RHODAN series is one of his roots. “What fascinates me most about the series are the many extraterrestrial creatures such as Blues, Maahks or Topiders, all of whom I would like to draw at some point,” says Michael Wittmann. »Johnny Bruck's inexhaustible visual imagination has certainly contributed significantly to the success of the PERRY RHODAN series. I am very pleased that I can participate in the further development of the PERRY RHODAN visual worlds with my interior illustrations.«