John Philip Falter - Pulp Dreams

Pulp Dreams

After graduating from high school in 1928, Falter studied at the Kansas City Art Institute where he met and became friends with R. G. Harris, Emery Clarke, and Richard E. Lyon. He won a scholarship to the Art Students League of New York City however only lasted one month there due to his fear of his fellow students, many of whom were avowed Communists. This was all too new for the small-town Falter, who fled and immediately looked for work as an illustrator. In the evenings, however, he took courses at the Grand Central School of Art, above Grand Central Terminal. This was during the Great Depression when most young artists had difficulty finding work. Falter, however, began illustrating covers for the pulp magazines.

He opened a studio in New Rochelle, New York, which had long been a colony for illustrators, a community that included such artists as Frederic Remington and Norman Rockwell. Within a few years his three Kansas City Art Institute friends Harris Clarke, and Lyon had all moved to a shared studio in New Rochelle to launch their respective careers as freelance illustrators. Falter recalled, "Rockwell was our inspiration then. I didn't meet him until years later. We would hear that Rockwell had been out on the street. and we'd all rush out and hunt for him. If they'd tell us that he had looked in a shop window, we'd look in the same window trying to absorb what he looked at by osmosis."