Original Men’s Adventure Magazine Illustration by Samson Pollen
Offered here is a thrilling, vintage and original, grayscale gouache on board by the prolific and frequently-published illustrator Samson Pollen.
A classic example of 1960s men’s magazine art, this high-stakes, action-packed illustration was likely published as an interior illustration of a men’s adventure magazine.
Excitement abounds in this illustration as a badass blonde pin-up girl in a bikini finds herself in the middle of a gunfight with soldiers on a ship out at sea. The sails of the ship have caught on fire while our heroine holds a smoking flare gun in her other hand.
Men’s Adventure Magazines as a Genre
Men’s adventure magazines (or MAM’s) were a genre of magazine published in the United States from the 1940s up until the early 1970s. Catering to male audiences, these magazines featured pin-up girls and lurid tales of adventure that typically featured wartime feats of daring, exotic travel, or conflict with wild animals. These magazines were also colloquially known as “armpit slicks”, “men’s sweat magazines”, or “the sweats”, especially by people in the magazine publishing or distribution trades.
Samson Pollen
Samson Pollen was a prolific illustrator in the genre of Men’s Adventure Magazines. In particular, Pollen’s dangerously beautiful women have gained quite a bit of attention themselves with the publication of the picture book, Pollen’s Women: The Art of Samson Pollen.
Pollen created hundreds of cover art and interior illustrations during the heyday of this genre, from the mid-1950s to the 1970s, and he is considered to be one of the greats.
Pollen recently passed away in December of 2018 and this never-before-seen original illustration is from his own collection.
This illustration is in excellent condition with no visible wear to the image area. The illustration board shows scattered corner and edge wear, but would be easily hidden behind matting and framing. Truly, a fantastic piece of mid-century American illustration!
The illustration board measures 30″ x 20″ with an image size of 24″ x 16″
