Original pin up pastel from 1941 by Jules Erbit titled Yours Truly, for the Gerlach-Barklow company, Joliet, Illinois. For sale at Grapefruit Moon Gallery.
Artist: Jules Erbit
Pin-Up & Glamour Art
Risqué and fetching maidens have always been popular artistic subjects and the perfect vehicle to advertise just about any product, add allure to any magazine, or brighten any calendar. In the 1930s, Rolf Armstrong and Billy Devorss’s Art Deco sophisticates were everyone’s dream girl. During World War II, George Petty and Alberto Vargas created patriotic lithe modernist heartbreakers for the pages of Esquire Magazine to keep servicemen company, and soon there was a calendar girl for every taste--whether you preferred the girl next door or the one from the wrong side of the tracks. In post-war America, the youthful spirit personified by Earl Moran’s cheesecake depictions of Marilyn Monroe reigned, and pin up and glamour art remained unflaggingly popular. Today, original pin up and glamour art is more coveted by collectors than ever, and its influence on contemporary fashion, art, and culture is everywhere.
An original signed painting by the prolific illustrator Henry Clive. This was likely commissioned for the cover of The American Weekly, a William Randolph Hearst publication. Clive spent three decades creating several hundred covers for this weekly publication, although the original paintings rarely come on the market. Pictured is pin-up model and Paramount Film Star Mona Freeman who made a nice career for herself typically cast as the perky good girl supporting actress.
Artist: Henry Clive
This jubilant pastel portrait of a young beaming pre-code chorine is an early signed offering by the famed pin-up artist Earl Moran. Dating to the early 1930s, the image appears to feature a young Alice Faye, who made her Broadway debut in George White’s Scandals in 1931 and made the move to Hollywood when the film version of the show was produced in 1934.
Artist: Earl Moran
The red-headed, zaftig, and delightfully charming calendar girl Hilda, in a yoga pose tests her balance in this original published pin-up painting by Duane Bryers, created for the Brown & Bigelow Calendar Company of Saint Paul, Minnesota. Hilda first appeared in the 1950s, and for two decades the free-spirited exploits of the somewhat daffy but imminently […]
Artist: Duane Bryers
A fresh to the market, good girl art painting by Howard Connelly, created as the June 1950 cover of the Thrilling Publications pulp title Thrilling Love. A pretty pin-up girl enjoys a soda fountain strawberry shake against a vibrant yellow fade away design aesthetic that is modernist and impactful. The 1940s and 50s saw the creation of […]
Artist: Howard Connelly
On offer is a spectacularly erotic French pre-pin up portrait of a Victorian redheaded maiden in very low cut gown by Henri Rondel. The artist was known for his sumptuous portraiture that juxtaposed the refined faces of French beauties with states of shocking undress. This example was acquired by the Osborne Art Company […]
Artist: Henri Rondel
This is a beautiful, unique, and rare preliminary graphite drawing by Gil Elvgren for a 1955 speciality advertising calendar for Brown & Bigelow’s exclusive “Miss Sylvania” line for Sylvania Electric. The Miss Sylvania account adapted The Great American Pin-Up to middle America’s buttoned up sensibilities. Each year one of the calendar company’s star artists would […]
Artist: Gil Elvgren
This fabulous original large format pin-up painting by Harry Ekman appeared as a Shaw Barton calendar in 1962, with the title “I Don’t Go Too Far In Any Direction!” Our patriotically dressed curvy co-ed appears to be indulging in that summer’s latest dance craze, swiveling her hips to the year’s biggest musical hits which included “The […]
Artist: Harry Ekman
Who–Who’s There? is a large and genre defining oil on board pin-up painting by Edward Eggleston, which was published by the American Art Works calendar company in the early 1930s. This is a rare surviving published calendar painting by the New York artist, created in an impressive light and shadow technique, capturing an art deco nude […]
Artist: Edward Eggleston
A boudoir themed pin-up girl original oil painting by Irving Winer from the art deco era, this shows a curvy brunette offering a leg show moment in her stylish dressing area with an electric cobalt blue circular mirror framing the image above her shoulder.
Artist: Irving Winer
