A fabulous surviving Gil Elvgren pin up oil painting from the Brown & Bigelow Calendar line of 1953, published with the title Out of the Running (What A Heel!). A pretty party girl laments the broken shoe that has temporarily taken her away from the evening’s fun. The image was a tremendous success for the company, and could be seen on calendars, blotters, and assorted ephemera throughout the 1950s. A glamorous example with a sexy undercurrent–the detail of expression and the impasto technique used to show off the transparency of her tulle skirting are particularly fine touches. Grapefruit Moon Gallery recently discovered her at a supper club in northern Wisconsin where she had resided since the 1950s, having been given to the proprietors of the restaurant shortly after completion by Elvgren himself. Remarkably, she hung on the restaurant’s walls since that time to the delight of decades of patrons. The work has been professionally cleaned and is in a very fine state of conservation, retaining the original limed wood frame.