Original Art from the Grand Age of American Illustration
This original oil on canvas painting, used as the cover for the January 1955 pulp digest, Imaginative Tales #3, shows a Vaudeville era magician and his pin-up girl assistant working a crowd and casting spells and presumably making things disappear. This was created to illustrate the interior story by Robert Bloch, titled Black Magic Holiday, […]
Artist: Harold McCauley
A wonderful original pin-up painting by Irving Winer, who was active creating covers for the girlie magazine titles of the 1940s such as Titter, Wink and Beauty Parade. He is also remembered for his numerous published pin-up calendar images usually signed with the single word “Wyner”. In this work –an obvious homage to Rita Hayworth […]
Artist: Irving Winer
This original oil on canvas painting, used as the cover for the January 1955 pulp digest, Imagination – Stories Of Science And Fantasy, offers a whimsical mid-century futuristic look at the then far-off year of 1990. The 1950s were abundant with delightfully optimistic and utopian visions of what future life would look like – works like […]
Artist: Harold McCauley
A remarkable, pulp cover painting by Harold H.W. McCauley for the Ziff-Davis science fiction pulp title Fantastic Adventures. Created as the cover for the July 1947 issue, illustrating the interior story “Goddess of the Golden Flame” by William P. McGivern. This is a dazzling work that combines suspense, peril and drama, with a […]
Artist: Harold McCauley
A genre defining girl in peril, menace themed pulp cover painting by the prolific and gifted American illustrator Peter Driben, this appeared as the cover for the December 1941 issue of Expose Detective True Crime Cases. Illustrating the interior story The Scarlet Sinner’s Final Exit, this lurid, large and rare surviving pulp cover painting has it all. Beautifully framed and in a fine state of conservation.
Artist: Peter Driben
Here at Grapefruit Moon Gallery, we are always tickled when illustration art shows up on PBS’s Antiques Roadshow, the 12-time Emmy nominated standard-bearer that paved the way for Pawn Stars, Storage Locker Wars, and a host of others shows that have gotten Americans searching their attics for dusty treasures. As loyal viewers, we were among the nearly eight […]
An explosive, apocalyptic WWII battle scene rages in this lurid large format illustration painting by Bruce Minney which appeared as the cover for the October 1963 edition of For Men Only magazine. With its strong jawed GIs and busty damsels with dynamite, the cover slug line of “playgirls turned killers…” sexploitive narrative is on full display, […]
Artist: Bruce Minney
This provocative, subversive interior illustration by Bruce Minney for Male Annual #8, 1970 illustrates the interior story “I Fought A Desert Bullwhip Duel For A Fortune In Gems.” The S&M and fetish themes are foregrounded in the image as Minney shows Yank Pat Duncan armed with only the whip of his savagely murdered partner getting frontier justice in […]
Artist: Bruce Minney
A daring gang of female POWs rappel down a wall of a secret “Nazi Sex Stalag” atop the perilous heights provided by Germany’s notorious Liecht castle, with the help of the “G.I. master escaper” Sergeant Howard Lester. This tense and taut hyper dramatic interior illustration scene by Bruce Minney is a classic example of men’s […]
Artist: Bruce Minney
A sultry brunette in a form fitting, canary yellow number cools herself with a personal pinwheel hand fan in this original oil on board pin-up painting by Peter Driben. Created as the cover of the February, 1946 edition of Titter magazine–a post-war pulp title that promised Girls, Gags and Giggles. Titter bridged the gap between the spicy pulp […]
Artist: Peter Driben
