art deco

Perhaps the finest nude pin-up ever created, this Earl Steffa Moran pastel is a fresh midwest estate find. This luminous masterwork dates from Moran’s “Light & Shadow” period. Marketed under the title “Tomorrow’s Star,” the model was reported to be Jean Harlow. Six early nudes by Moran were packaged as a large format high end print folio which Brown & Bigelow gave as a premium gift to its most lucrative business accounts under the title “Running into Six Figures.” Many collectors site the folio as the high water mark of pin-up art.

Show Girl

Artist: Earl Moran

A delightful pastel by Pearl L. Hill. This dates from the 1920’s and was presumably used as a cover for a period woman’s magazine (likely Modern Priscilla). A demure yet playfully-posed, modernist, roaring 20s flapper girl with short bobbed hair strikes a winning pose in this large, nicely matted and framed illustration. Hill created seven cover paintings in the early 1920’s for the prestigious “Saturday Evening Post.” Her illustrations modernized the American woman in glamorous art deco fashion.

Demure Flapper With Bobbed Hair

Artist: Pearl Hill

A large pastel by Leon Dolice featuring a stark view of an illuminated New York City skyline. Leon Dolice worked for over 60 years painting New York City views borrowing from the French Impressionists and Claude Monet specifically. His countless pastel variations capture his beloved Manhattan in varying lighting and color combinations and pastel configurations. The work highlights the extreme skyscraper forms and machine age industrialism which transformed the New York skyline during the art deco jazz age. A fresh estate find from the Collection of The Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota.

New York City Skyline

Artist: Leon Dolice

A flirty, scandalous and new to the market cover illustration by Enoch Bolles, which appeared first as a cover for a 1930’s Young’s Magazine, and again made an appearance on a 1938 cover of Breezy Stories. Enoch Bolles excelled in these curiously proportioned Spicy Pulp, envelope pushing, angular modernist heartbreakers. This is a spectacular work which, like most Bolles’ offerings, is unsigned and is nicely framed and ready to hang.

Bathing Beauty in Sun Hat

Artist: Enoch Bolles

A delightful early Rolf Armstrong original pastel in which the artist employs an impressionist and modern technique for the shadowing and details. This is a lovely and unusual transition piece from the period in Armstrong’s career where he began to shift from depicting winsome art nouveau beauties to the more dramatic and angular art deco flapper girls which defined his career. We have yet to find a printed version of this stunning original artwork by the father of American pin-up.

An Orchid and a Smile

Artist: Rolf Armstrong

Grapefruitmoongallery is proud to offer one of 3 original commissioned large circular oil paintings that adorned the restaurant walls of Larue’s a legendary Hollywood, Sunset Blvd. haunt that was owned by gangster character actor Jack LaRue. Henry Clive was a frequent patron and close friend of LaRue, these paintings were purchased directly from the restaurant about 45 years ago by the artist’s son Henry Clive O’Hara. In addition to being a prolific cover illustrator for Randolph Hearst’s American Weekly, Clive painted several large risque and attention garnering commisioned mural works for Hollywood landmarks like The Jade and The Masquers Club as well as LaRue’s.

Titled The Girl of the Golden West, the painting is named after and based on a Canco tin illustration Clive created in the 1920s. The work is framed in original round art deco silver & bronze washed wood frame and dedicated To my pal Jack; Henry Clive 1956.

Girl of the Golden West

Artist: Henry Clive

A large, art deco era, original pastel on illustration board by the well listed and prolific American Illustrator Warde Traver. This is an as of yet unidentified calendar or magazine commission. Image features a proud brightly colored deftly rendered peacock showing his bright plumage. Work is matted and framed in period green painted wood frame.

A Proud Peacock in Pastels

Artist: Warde Traver

This is a suggestive and subtle 1929 oil on canvas painting featuring a pierrot and ballerina in a quiet ‘behind the curtain’ circus moment. This large scale stylized art deco work is mournful and gay all at once, evoking all of the tensions of jazz age culture. Italian-born Alphonse Palumbo studied in New York at the Art Students League under Louis Mora and Frank DuMond. He exhibited at the Allied Artists of America, the National Academy of Design and the Society of Independent Artists.

Pierrot and Ballerina Art Deco Interior Scene

Artist: Alphonse Palumbo

We have for your consideration an evocotive and stirring aquatic themed oil on canvas by the well listed American Illustrator Douglass Crockwell. This original advertising illustration was created for Red & White Food, and was a take off on the classic tale Moby Dick by Herman Melville. This original artwork was kept in the company’s archives and presented to an employee by the name of William E. Krapf in 1940 as the gallery label attests.

Harpooning a Whale

Artist: Douglass Crockwell

A delicately rendered and stylized watercolor on illustration board by the well listed commercial illustrator Alex Luders. This is a remarkable work of an art deco era harem girl enchantress entranced in a sexy exotic veiled scarf dance. The artist Alex Luders did much commercial Hollywood advertising poster art for Fox Films including Shirley Temple and Jack Holt’s starring turn in the 1935 feature film The Littlest Rebel. This is presumed to also be a commissioned work for an as of yet undetermined art deco era movie campaign.

A Veiled Harem Dancer

Artist: Alex Luders

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