art deco

Grapefruit Moon Gallery is happy to offer an original gouache illustration likely used as the final preliminary study for the cover of the May 17th, 1930 Edition of Judge Magazine. Verso reads “Cover for Judge, Joseph Morgan.” Work is in a John Held Jr. jazz age, modernist style with a flapper girl enduring the attention of an over zealous Soda Fountain attendant. The smaller sight size leads us to believe this is not the completed cover, but it is the most fun you can have in the world of Illustration art for $850.00.

The Soda Jerk

Artist: Joseph Morgan

An alarmingly beautiful art deco era original pastel pin-up illustration by Billy Devorss titled “Prize Winner”. A ravishing and radiant blond bathing beauty contestant winner in her slinky and current one piece suit and beach cape. One of the artist’s most successful and enduring creations. In original limed wood frame behind glass with a framing label from “M.Goldberg picture frames, 323 W. 45th St. N.Y. A rare surviving radiant work from Devorss’ most productive period, when his penthouse studio was in New York City’s prestigious Beaux Arts Building.

Prize Winner

Artist: Billy DeVorss

A large and early Zoe Mozert pastel, used as commissioned calendar art in the early 1930s. This illustration is remembered as one of Mozert’s most enduring and well realized images. Featuring a fabulous flapper girl with idealized Jean Harlow like features in a stylish art deco turban, this is a colorful commissioned artwork recently unearthed from a Florida estate.

Irresistible

Artist: Zoe Mozert

A dazzling art deco era original oil on canvas by noted New York Illustrator Walter Beach Humphrey. Humphrey did 3 covers for The Saturday Evening Post in 1923. He also was a frequent cover contributor for Colliers , Liberty and Argosy Magazines. He currently has works on display at the Norman Rockwell Museum in their Toast of the Town exhibit. The model was the artist’s wife Connie Regina. I am assuming this was painted as a decorative work as I cannot imagine a cover it could have been used for with the possible exception of a Burlesque or Follies Bergere type program cover.

Decorative Art Deco Nude

Artist: Walter Beach Humphrey

A dazzling 1920s art deco illustration painting of a beautifully costumed, formally attired maiden at an evening summertime patio engagement. Work is stylistically mindful of Edward Eggleston and Gene Pressler who created countless similar fanciful colorful and ornamental images for calendar companies of the era. It is our belief that this too was a published calendar image. Work is beautifully matted and framed in a handsome gesso art deco period frame.

A Summer Time Fete

Artist: Eyre

An exquisite stylized, modernist, French art deco mixed media work in subdued muted tones by Edouard Sureau. In pastel and gold gilt paint, this features a delicately rendered muse with halo enraptured by a musical lyre. The top of the instrument forms a cross and the figure itself forms an angelic allegory, of the style popular in the art deco decorative arts. Work is signed and in a fine state of preservation nicely matted, framed, and ready to hang.

A Modernist Muse

Artist: Edouard Sureau

A deftly rendered cover painting for The American Magazine by Herbert Paus, who developed an inventive and entirely modernist, machine age, industrial aesthetic. A striking seaside beauty is depicted playing a concertina in this rare surviving original cover painting from the golden age of American illustration. Herbert Paus was a leading illustrator who contributed covers for Life, Collier’s, Leslie’s and the Woman’s Home Companion magazines.

Seaside with a Concertina

Artist: Herbert Paus

An inventive mixed medium early work by Edwin Georgi used as the cover for an early 1930s issue of “The Woman’s Home Companion.” A linear and modernist rendering of women’s disembodied heads that contrasts the art deco era ideal of make-up enhanced feminine beauty with classic Greek porcelain statuary. A clever and stylized early work by one of our favorite American Illustrators, Edwin Georgi.

A Pair of Art Deco Heads

Artist: Edwin Georgi

A wonderfully conceived and deftly executed art deco original risque artwork from Rolf Armstrong’s short tenure in Hollywood. This large pastel dates to 1932 and is a rare nude by the Father of American pin up. This transcendent work was unearthed in the late 1990s in the estate of a one of Armstrong’s former models. This important piece was exhibited at a solo show of the artist’s work in 1999 at the Bruce R. Lewin Gallery in New York City. A program from the exhibition featuring “The Blue Nude” is included with sale.

The Blue Nude

Artist: Rolf Armstrong

A strongly rendered, machine age/industrial revolution inspired modernist 1935 oil painting by Thomas Tyrone Comfort, used as the cover for The Los Angeles Herald & Express; Oct.19, 1936. Comfort worked as an art deco-era muralist and illustrator. His work evokes the spirit of the WPA movement, his brilliant career was cut short in 1939 when the artist passed away at the young age of 30.

Controlled Power

Artist: Tyrone Comfort

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