Born in Lima, Peru, Boris attended the National School of Fine Arts in his native country before immigrating to the United States in 1964. In 1964, at the age of 23, Boris Vallejo purchased a one-way plane ticket and left his hometown of Lima, Peru for New York City. He arrived in the US with a suitcase of clothes, some samples of his artwork, his violin, and $80.00 in his pocket. Already recognized for his artwork while working at the Peruvian branch of McCann-Erisckson, a large advertising agency, Boris planned on spending two years in the United States to learn English. He also hoped to develop the expertise to operate his own advertising agency. 

But one year later, on his return to Peru for Christmas vacation, he realized that his future lay elsewhere; the career he sought could only be fulfilled in a larger, more industrial environment. 

For sheer dauntless bravura, few have ever pushed the limits as does Boris with his beautiful maidens and fearsome monsters.

His mastery of oil painting is immediately and abundantly clear to anyone who looks at his work, and his classic sense is as much an homage to the old masters as it is to anyone contemporaneously working in the Fantasy genre.

 

He has since done a great volume of work for the Fantasy field, having worked for virtually every major publishing house with a science fiction/fantasy line. Boris has also illustrated for album covers, video box art and motion picture advertising.

He has gained worldwide attention for his stunning illustrations of science fiction and fantasy; his works appear on the covers of books by such writers as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Alice Chetwynd Ley, Frederik Pohl, Larry Niven, and Lin Carter, as well as in such well-known series as Doc Savage, Tarzan, and Conan.  Much of his art was published in The Fantastic Art of Boris Vallejo. He also created the illustrations for Mirage.