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Grapefruit Moon Gallery

Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration

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Sorry, It's Sold

Fairest Flower

Artist:Zoe Mozert
Date:1940s
Medium:Pastel on Illustration Board
Dimensions:Sight Size 26" x 32" Framed 38" x 44"
Condition:Excellent
Original Use:Calendar Art For Brown & Bigelow
Price: Sold
Full view
Full view
The artist's signature lower left
The artist’s signature lower left
Framed and silk matted under glass
Framed and silk matted under glass

The Fairest Flower is a deliriously sexy rare surviving nude pin-up pastel by Zoe Mozert created for The Brown & Bigelow Calendar Company. In 1941, after a prolific decade long career as a leading pulp and movie magazine cover illustrator, Zoe Mozert signed on as a staff artist with Brown & Bigelow where she quickly established herself as one of the finest pin up artists in America. Confident and attractive, Mozert often used herself as her own model, and The Fairest Flower is in fact a self portrait of sorts. The artist’s uninhibited nature, along with her quick tongue and biting sarcastic wit, endeared her to many and alienated her from many more, but even those who found her off-putting found themselves awed by her beauty and talent. This pastel is by all means one of the artist’s defining and most important works, a young nude captured in light and shadow against a cobalt blue dramatic setting, a fresh to the market Arizona estate find. The art is handsomely framed under glass in a period, carved limed wood frame in a pristine state of original conservation.

The artist posed for and the completed Brown & Bigelow Print "Bubbles".
The artist posed for and the completed Brown & Bigelow Print “Bubbles”.

The artist known as Zoe Mozert was born Alice Adelaide Moser and studied with Howard Pyle. She moved to New York in 1932 and found steady work there, in the late thirties she was sought after as a movie poster artist. She painted Jane Russell for the Howard Hughes film, The Outlaw. She painted a series of wildly circulated “Victory Girl” calendar mailing cards during World War II. The artist typically worked in pastel and captured an innocence in the female form that was unique to a woman figure model and artist.

Detail
Detail
Verso Inventory label from Brown & Bigelow
Verso inventory label from Brown & Bigelow
Frame corner profile detail
Frame corner profile detail
Zoe Mozert as a nude figure model for Earl Moran
Zoe Mozert as a nude figure model for Earl Moran
The artist Zoe Mozert reading in bed...
The artist Zoe Mozert reading in bed

Fairest Flower

Artist: Zoe Mozert
Price:  Sold

Filed Under: Sorry, It's Sold
Tagged With: 1940s, art deco, Brown & Bigelow, erotic, glamour, Golden Age, nude, original calendar art, original illustration art, pin up, risque, The Golden Gallery, Zoe Mozert
Added to Gallery: January 25, 2017

 

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    About Grapefruit Moon Gallery

    Grapefruit Moon Gallery, based in Minneapolis MN, specializes in vintage pin up and original illustration art.  We are the proud home of the Bunny Yeager archives.

    Since 2003, Grapefruit Moon Gallery has been a leading dealer of exclusive original paintings by Gil Elvgren, Alberto Vargas, Earl Moran, Rolf Armstrong and Henry Clive, as well as vintage photographs, prints, and period decorative arts in ceramic and metal.

    All artworks featured are original, accurately represented, and guaranteed to be the work of the named artist.

    Interested buyers may view pieces by appointment and we are happy to answer any questions you may have. [Contact Us]

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