An explosive, apocalyptic WWII battle scene rages in this lurid large format illustration painting by Bruce Minney which appeared as the cover for the October 1963 edition of For Men Only magazine. With its strong jawed GIs and busty damsels with dynamite, the cover slug line of “playgirls turned killers…” sexploitive narrative is on full display, this loosely illustrates the interior story, “Fräulein Raiders.” Bruce Minney was recently featured on an episode of the TV series American Pickers, which showed the two network stars pick up six of the artist’s paintings certainly on the cheap side, they then had them evaluated at a bookstore in Memphis where they appraised at absurdly low numbers considering the current robust market of lurid Mens Magazine cover art. Sadly, Bruce Minney died the very day before the episode with his artwork being a featured pick was aired. Below are a couple of screen shots of the episode that aired last season. From previously watching the episode, I recognized the sellers as vendors from an antique show I’d recently attended in Florida. I contacted them several times in hopes of acquiring some examples and my persistence paid off as we recently purchased 9 paintings from them directly.
In Adam Parfey’s 2003 volume on post-war pulps It’s A Man’s World; Men’s Adventure Magazines, the author states: “Consumerism, the specifically American style of propaganda best promoted by the work of Mort Kunstler in the 50’s and beyond, is an aesthetic limited by little beyond the ability to sell a magazine, though it rhetorically promoted the idea that America no matter it’s behavior was always morally superior. Other political beliefs, Nazism and Communism particularly, were by the conduct of their soldiers always portrayed as being perverse, ruthless and vicious. The racial component and sadistic misogyny of men’s magazines from the 50’s, the 60’s and even the 70’s is today astounding.”
“What’s also astounding is the imagination of the illustrations, all tractioned by the ability to depict fear. Fear of enemies, fear of animals, fear of women, fear of any loaded attack on the buyer’s manliness.”
