If fantasy has a face, it’s surely a face painted by Gervasio Gallardo. The success of The Lord of the Rings made it clear that millions of readers ached for more enchantment, adventure, and wonder. Ballantine’s Adult Fantasy line of paperbacks provided it, publishing works by authors as canonical as H. P. Lovecraft, Lord Dunsany, and James Branch Cabell. And no one created more covers for that line than Gervasio Gallardo. Gallardo, a Spanish-born artist who worked in advertising for years, had an affinity for the space where surrealism meets yearning: the landscape of dreams, in other words, and the best fantasies are nothing if not dreams.

In his worlds, imagination doesn’t clash with nature, it enhances its beauty. They’re worlds in which a leaf is as detailed, and as striking, as a well-dressed woman whose face is half-hidden by a huge butterfly. Or in which the motion of a wave is as astonishing as man-sized birds in formal wear. The key feeling his work evokes is that of yearning. To tempt us away from fluorescent-lit rooms? To get us to park our SUVs at the entrance of a forest and to continue forward on foot? And not out of a desire to escape, but a desire to find?

Each of the many works contained herein are cupboards leading to Narnia, or hurricanes tugging at Dorothy Gale’s home, or a big brass key found in your backyard, a key clearly made to fit the lock you only now realize has been set into the black oak.

The Art of Gervasio Gallardo reproduces this master’s art. Inside are all the worlds calling to you. With John Kissane’s introduction, this book represents the largest collection of artwork from this master ever collected.