Iconic ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Indiana Jones’ movie poster artist dead

The news was confirmed by Struzan’s official Instagram page, with a message reading, “It is with a heavy heart that I must tell you that Drew Struzan has moved on from this world as of yesterday, October 13th. I feel it is important that you all know how many times he expressed to me the joy he felt knowing how much you appreciated his art.”

While there has been no cause of death has been revealed at this time, Struzan had Alzheimer’s disease for a number of years. Despite living a quiet life at home, he also refrained from making any public appearances for years before his passing.

After starting his career on various independent films, Struzan’s first major endeavour was making the first re-release poster for Star Wars in 1978. From there, he would go on to work on other George Lucas films as well as create posters for movies such as Risky Business, The Goonies, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

Spielberg considered Struzan one of his go-to movie poster artists as well, contributing to films from the Indiana Jones franchise. The director would go on to say that working alongside someone like Struzan presented its own unique set of challenges, saying, “I had to almost live up to the art that we later were going to ask Drew to create for the poster.”

Among the various artists that paid tribute to Struzan have been fellow movie poster giants such as Jim Lee, as well as Marvel artist J Scott Campbell, noting that Struzan’s artwork “has left us all with so much beauty to enjoy for generations to come.”

However, despite his retirement, Struzan always kept a positive outlook on his craft. While a book chronicling his work was published in 2011, he maintained that the best work he’s ever done was always the next sheet he was working on.

Strauzan is survived by his wife, Dylan, as well as his son, Christian.