Heritage Auctions announced the sale of Frank Frazetta’s Escape on Venus for $660,000.

The price realized by Escape on Venus was the third-highest ever through Heritage Auctions for a Frazetta painting. Death Dealer 6 Painting Original Art (1990) brought a record $1,792,500 in May 2018, and Frank Frazetta At The Earth's Core Paperback Cover Painting Original Art (1974), sold for $1,075,500 in August 2016.

Used as the cover image for the 1974 re-issue of the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel of the same name, Escape on Venus was created in 1972 and released as a print later in the decade.

"Frazetta was very proud of the work. Ever innovating, he worked to differentiate every piece in a unique way. While always conscious of his audience, he incessantly challenged himself. During this period, he expanded his palette with vivid hues, and boasted that he could make those colors work in a believable, sensuous way. No one can argue that he did not achieve his goal!

Frazetta has a legion of fans, and a major reason is that he crossed over into several categories, each with its own exuberant fan base. They can be distinguished as the 4Bs -- Babes, Burroughs, Barbarians, and Beasts. When a Frazetta image contains more than one element, the demand rises exponentially. This painting certainly covers three of the four.

Frank often liked to discuss (or hear) what made his images so popular, not just after the fact, but also at the time of publication. It is well known how his covers would immediately stimulate the sale of a publication.

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