Boris Chaliapin (1904-1979)
The son of legendary Russian opera singer Fyodor Chaliapin, news artist Boris Chaliapin was also a son of the Russian Revolution. Forced by the Soviet regime into a training program for sculptors, Chaliapin (pictured at right) struck out for Paris in 1925, only to find his deeply rooted sense of realism at odds with that city's infatuation with avant-garde art. Next stop: New York, where a chance acquaintance with a former TIME foreign news editor led to a commission for a magazine cover of Jawaharlal Nehru. Chaliapin made TIME his home for the next 28 years, supplying the "C" in the famous "ABCs," the three TIME artists (Artzybasheff, Baker, Chaliapin) who, for decades, defined the look of TIME's cover. Between 1939 and 1970, the trio completed over half of the covers published by the magazine. Chaliapin's key contribution? Speed.
PHOTO BY BEN MARTIN