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Cleonike Damianakes (1895–1979), known by the nom de plume Cleon, was an American illustrator and etcher, especially of book dust jackets. She designed first-edition book covers for novelists including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda Fitzgerald, Conrad Aitken, David Burnham, and Arthur B. Reeve. A Greek American, she was known for the classical Greek influence in her art work.

Early life and education

She was born in Berkeley, California, to Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas P. Damianakes. Cleo had four sisters, including Alexandra, Marie, Stephanie, and Dorothy Damianakes, and a brother who was college athlete. She attended Oakland High School, where she contributed illustrations to Aegis, a literary journal published semi-annually by the girls at the school.

Damianakes studied at The California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, then enrolled in a two-year course in anatomy at the University of California. During her senior year, she received the Taussig scholarship, and graduated in 1918. While working on her master's degree, she created a series of mural panels in lieu of writing a thesis; the mural was later hung in the auditorium at Berkeley High School.

She moved to New York after receiving a fellowship to the Art Students League. Damianakes won first place in a mural competition at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, for her design featuring a group of girls dancing under eucalyptus trees.

Career

In 1925, two paintings by Cleon were chosen as cover designs for the October and Christmas issues of Scribner's Magazine.

Covers for Hemingway

She designed dust jackets for Ernest Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms) and F. Scott Fitzgerald (All the Sad Young Men), hired by editor Maxwell Perkins to create covers that would appeal to female readers.

For The Sun Also Rises, she etched a seated Hellenic figure in front of a small desiccated tree, head bent, wearing a billowing robe exposing her left thigh. With her right hand draped over her left knee and an apple in the other hand, the design "breathed sex yet also evoked classical Greece." Author Leonard Leff writes, "What Cecile B. de Mille's 'studies in diminishing draperies' had done for Hollywood, the artist Cleonike Damianakes had done for Scribners: 'Cleon' had made sex respectable."

She found it more challenging to design a cover for A Farewell to Arms. One of her designs featuring helmets and artillery was rejected outright by Perkins, who explained that Scribners did not want to market it as a "war book". In the late summer of 1969, Damianakes submitted her final design, which echoed the cover of The Sun Also Rises. This time there were two figures of antiquity, including a mostly nude female who was reclining, and a male who was wearing only a loin cloth, leaning on one arm resting on his knee, while holding a broken axle with the other arm.

Hemingway did not like her cover art for A Farewell to Arms, and wrote to Perkins about its "lousy and completely unattractive decadence i.e. large misplaced breasts etc ...the awful legs on the woman or the gigantic belly muscles (on the man)".

Other designs

She also did designs for Zelda Fitzgerald (Save Me the Waltz), Conrad Aiken, and David Hamilton. She designed the cover for David Burnham's first novel This Our Exile. She designed the cover of Arthur B. Reeve's Pandora in 1926.

Personal life

Her second marriage was to Ralph Wilkins, and she was later also known as Cleonike or Cleo Wilkins.

Legacy

Six of her etchings are in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art. Her work is also in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

References

1. "Etchings Exhibition by Modern Masters Open Until Thursday". The Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram. Richmond, Indiana. October 29, 1921. p. 8. Retrieved 2022-09-27.
2. ^ Salisbury, Martin (2017). The illustrated dust jacket, 1920-1970. London. pp. 62–65. ISBN 9780500519134. Retrieved 20 September 2022.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
3. ^ "Society". Oakland Tribune. October 17, 1916. p. 11. Retrieved 2022-09-27 – via Newspapers.com.
4. ^ "Girl Honored by Berkeley High". Oakland Tribune. February 2, 1919. p. 40. Retrieved 2022-09-27 – via Newspapers.com.
5. "Prize Stories Are Feature of Journal". Oakland Tribune. April 18, 1911. p. 10. Retrieved 2022-09-27 – via Newspapers.com.
6. "Cleo Damianakes Shows Etchings". Oakland Tribune. August 21, 1921. p. 36. Retrieved 2022-09-27 – via Newspapers.com.
7. ^ "Artist known at Tarpon Springs". The Tampa Tribune. November 2, 1925. p. 4. Retrieved 2022-09-25 – via Newspapers.com.
8. Hilbert, Ernest (December 18, 2017). "Book World: A colorful history of judging books by their covers". Washington Post. Retrieved 2022-09-25 – via Gale OneFile.
9. ^ Leff, Leonard J. (1997). Hemingway and His Conspirators: Hollywood, Scribners, and the Making of American Celebrity Culture. Lanham, Maryland and Oxford, England: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 51, 113–114. ISBN 0-8476-8544-6.
10. "This Our Exile David BURNHAM". Bauman Rare Books. Retrieved 21 September 2022.
11. "Cleo Damianakes". The National Gallery of Art. Retrieved 21 September 2022.
12. "Cleo Damianakes". Art Institute of Chicago. Retrieved 21 September 2022.
13. "Cleo Damianakes". Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved 21 September 2022.
14. "Wind Cleo Damianakes (American, 1895-1979)". Indianapolis Museum of Art. Retrieved 21 September 2022.

• 1895 births
• 1979 deaths
• American illustrators
• Book designers
• People from Berkeley, California