Born in Sherman, Texas in 1930, Phil grew up in Louisiana, served in the Air Force and in 1952 enrolled at the Art Center College of Design

Art Center College of Design

Art Center College of Design is a private college located in Pasadena, California, and was cited by BusinessWeek as one of the 60 best design schools in the world. The college’s industrial design program is consistently ranked number one by both DesignIntelligence and U.S...

 in Pasadena. After graduating in 1955, Hays moved to New York. Almost overnight he became a top illustrator creating romantic illustrations for magazines like Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, Redbook and McCalls. In 1957 Silas Rhodes invited him to teach at the young School of Visual Arts

School of Visual Arts

The School of Visual Arts , is a proprietary art school located in Manhattan, New York City, and is widely considered to be one of the leading art schools in the United States. It was established in 1947 by co-founders Silas H. Rhodes and Burne Hogarth as the Cartoonists and Illustrators School and...

, and Hays did, soon becoming head of the illustration program. In 1978 Hays accepted an invitation from Art Center College of Design to head their illustration program and moved back to California.

His former student Doug Aitken

Doug Aitken

-Early life and career:Doug Aitken was born in Redondo Beach, California in 1968. In 1987, he initially studied magazine illustration with Philip Hays at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena before graduating in Fine Arts in 1991. He moved to New York in 1994 where he had his first solo...

wrote, “Hays’ work slid under the door of popular culture and affected it like sand falling in the cracks of a machine…the glamour of the subjects fade and their flaws and vulnerability appear…revealed is our beautiful disintegration as we’re faced with the inevitable race toward mortality.”

External links

• http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/nyregion/30hays.html
• http://www.philhays.com/