Erich von Götha is the best-known pseudonym of the British illustrator and comic artist Robin Ray. He has also used the name Baldur Grimm as another self. Ray was born in 1924 in Wimbledon, London. His reputation rests on erotic art, and especially on sadomasochistic comics and paintings: rope, ritual, period costume, and power scenes, drawn with a polished, nearly classical line. Collectors of BDSM art place him in a European SM illustration tradition that runs from de Sade-era fantasy to modern adult comics. Solo shows include Sweat Tears & Reflections at Mondo Bizarro Gallery in Bologna. Work of his is tied to the Paris publication of The Secret Notebooks of Janice at Larmes d’Eros. Talisman Fine Art represents him and distributes prints.
Ray studied drawing and painting for four years at St Martins art school in London, then worked in London advertising as a designer and copywriter. He took three years out to teach graphic design at Ealing School of Art. A chance meeting with Tuppy Owens, the English sex therapist, campaigner, writer, and former adult model, led to Sex Maniac’s Diary, a commercial success bought mainly by women. The publisher then suggested an erotic comic, Torrid, which appeared irregularly through the 1980s. Ray has treated Torrid as something closer to a hobby, made with full creative freedom in what he called the first flush of Swinging London energy. That freedom set the frank SM tone of the strips.
He stopped the original Torrid run after discovering that publishers had sold strips from the first sixteen issues without his knowledge. Those strips later turned up in the French magazines YES and Bédé Adult. Publisher Lionel Roc then pushed the work hard in France, and many international readers first met the name von Götha in the French adult-comics market. Conte à Rebours, the science-fiction story he drew for YES, became strangely hard to follow because of the circumstances of its translation. Another widely known serial is Crimes et Délits, the series that came after Georges Lévis, including Ray’s illustrated section on Rasputin.
His most famous work is The Troubles of Janice, set in the era of the Marquis de Sade and published across four albums. The first appeared in 1980. The cycle was a close collaboration with Bernard Joubert, the French writer, historian, and collector. In 2008 Dynamite published a luxury edition of all four albums together. English versions of Janice and of his other serial, Twenty, were published in the 2000s by the Erotic Print Society. Period setting, aristocratic cruelty, and elaborate SM scenes made The Troubles of Janice a reference for readers who want historical-flavored sadomasochism rather than a contemporary dungeon played straight.
Since the 1980s Ray has painted many erotic pictures for friends and collectors, and he has published several books with Larmes d’Eros in Paris. He still makes prints and commissions, usually erotic, often on mythological themes. In 2016 Dynamite released a comprehensive biography written by Joubert, who was collaborator, translator, and a friend of many years. The book uses humor and a lot of pictures to correct a life story that rumor had weirdly rewritten.
