Peter Driben (October 22, 1903 - September, 1968), an American pin-up artist, was perhaps one of the most productive pin-up artists of the 1940s and 1950s. [1] Although both Alberto Vargas and Gil Elvgren have extensive catalogues of work, neither came close to the output of Driben. Driben's pinups delighted the American public from the beginning of World War II until the great baby boom of the 1950s.
Born in Boston, Driben studied at Vesper George Art School before moving to Paris (circa 1925). While taking classes at the Sorbonne in 1925, he began a series of highly popular pen-and-ink drawings of the city's showgirls. His first known pin-up was the cover to La Paree Stories in March 1934. [2] By 1935, he was producing covers for Snappy, Pep, New York Nights, French Night Life and Caprice. Driben's popularity continued to rise in the late thirties with covers for Silk Stocking Stories, Gay Book, Movie Merry-Go-Round and Real Screen Fun.
Driben's career expanded into advertising with his move to New York in late 1936. He created original three-dimensional die-cut window displays for Philco Radios, Cannon Bath Towels, and the Weber Baking Company. Perhaps his most famous work being the original posters and publicity artwork for The Maltese Falcon. Peter Driben was also a close friend of publisher Robert Harrison, and in 1941 was contracted to produce covers for Harrison's new magazine Beauty Parade. Driben went on to paint hundreds of covers for that publication and for the other seven titles Harrison was to launch - Flirt, Whisper, Titter, Wink, Eyeful, Giggles, and Joker. [3] Driben would often have as many as six or seven of his covers being published every month. Driben's work for Harrison established him as one of America's most recognized and successful pin-up and glamour artists. Just before he began to work for Harrison, Driben married the artist, actress and poet, Louise Kirby.
In 1944 he was offered the unusual opportunity, for a pin-up artist, of becoming the art director of the New York Sun, a post he retained until 1946. During the war, his popular painting of American soldiers raising the flag at Iwo Jima sparked a considerable amount of media attention.
In 1956, Driben and Louise moved to Miami Beach, where he spent his retirement years painting portraits (including one of Dwight D. Eisenhower) and other fine-art works, which were organized into successful exhibitions by his wife. Driben died in 1968, Louise in 1984.
Art Frahm (1907–1981) was an American painter of campy pin-up girls and advertising. Frahm lived in Chicago, and was active from the 1940s to 1960s. He was commercially successful.
Gillette Elvgren was an American painter of pin-up girls, advertising and illustration. Best known for his pin-up paintings for Brown & Bigelow, Elvgren studied at the American Academy of Art. He was strongly influenced by the early "pretty girl" illustrators, such as Charles Dana Gibson, Andrew Loomis, and Howard Chandler Christy. Other influences included the Brandywine School founded by Howard Pyle.
Joaquin Alberto Vargas y Chávez was a noted Peruvian painter of pin-up girls. He is often considered one of the most famous of the pin-up artists. Numerous Vargas paintings have sold and continue to sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Pornographic magazines or erotic magazines, sometimes known as adult, sex or top-shelf magazines, are magazines that contain content of an explicitly sexual nature. Publications of this kind may contain images of attractive naked subjects, as is the case in softcore pornography, and, in the usual case of hardcore pornography, depictions of masturbation, oral, vaginal or anal sex.
Olivia De Berardinis, known professionally as Olivia, is an American artist who is famous for her paintings of women, often referred to as pinup or cheesecake art. She has been working in this genre since the mid-1970s, becoming a contributor to Playboy in 1985. By June 2004, she was given her own monthly pinup page for the magazine that continued for many years, often appearing with captions written by Hugh Hefner.
Arnold Armitage (1899–1991) was a British-born artist and illustrator, best known for his work with pin-up art. He moved to the United States around 1925 and settled in Hollywood, California, working for the Foster and Kleiser Company, which produced billboards. During the 1930s, he developed a reputation as a designer specializing in billboards, and he designed many of these for American corporations.
Joyce Ballantyne was a painter of pin-up art. She is best known as the designer of the Coppertone girl, whose swimming costume is being pulled down by a dog.
Ben-Hur Baz (1906–2003) was a painter of pin-up art.
Vaughan Alden Bass was an American painter of pin-up art.
Earle K. Bergey was an American artist and illustrator who painted cover art for thousands of pulp fiction magazines and paperback books. One of the most prolific pulp fiction artists of the 20th century, Bergey is recognized for creating, at the height of his career in 1948, the iconic cover of Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925) for Popular Library.
Roy Best was an American illustrator and painter of pin-up girls.
Enoch Bolles was an American painter of pin-up art. He was among the earliest and most widely circulated glamour illustrators. While known today solely as a pinup artist, Bolles was a versatile illustrator who also worked extensively in the advertising industry, creating hundreds of attractive color illustrations for products ranging from bread to cigarettes. His most widely reproduced advertising illustration is the "Windy Girl" for Zippo lighters. This work, produced in 1937, has recently been reissued as the Vargas Windy Girl and has appeared in well over 100 variations on Zippo lighters.
Harry C. Bradley was an American painter of pin-up art.
Alfred Leslie Buell (1910–1996) was an American painter of pin-up art. He was born in Hiawatha, Kansas in 1910, and grew up in Cushing, Oklahoma. He attended some classes at the Art Institute of Chicago, which, in concert with a trip to New York City, decided him on a career in art.
Robert D. Blue was a painter noted for his images of pin-up girls in the 1980s and later his cowgirls of the New West series. He was the son of comedic actor Ben Blue. Blue's work precedes that of Patrick Nagel, as Blue's credits as a commercial artist date as early as 1970. A Blue painting was used for the album back cover art for Iron Butterfly "Metamorphosis" 1970 LP release and he painted fetish pin-ups of icon Bettie Page on canvas as early as 1974, which were collected by the "Pin-up King" Charles G. Martignette.. Other notable collectors of Blue's art have included Jack Nicholson, Barbra Streisand, Brian Wilson and Hugh Hefner, as well as numerous corporate collectors, including the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Los Angeles, and the Atlanta Hilton Motel. Blue's prize paintings are in the National Archives in Washington D.C. and the permanent collection of the Carnegie Art Museum.
Zoë Mozert, born Alice Adelaide Moser, was an American illustrator. She was also known as one of the early 20th century's most famous pin-up artists and models.
Earl Steffa Moran, born in Belle Plaine, Iowa, was a 20th-century pin-up and glamour artist. Moran's first instruction in art came under the direction of John Stich, an elderly German artist who also taught the great illustrator W.H.D. Koerner. Moran also studied with Walter Biggs at the Chicago Art Institute.
Harry Ekman was an American graphic artist. His early influences were Gil Elvgren, Haddon Sundblom, Joyce Ballantyne. Ekman initially apprenticed with Sundblom who was a close family friend and by 1951 for Elvgren.
Louis K. Meisel is an American author, art dealer and proponent of the photorealist art movement, having coined the term in 1969. He is also the owner of one of the earliest art galleries in SoHo at 141 Prince Street. In addition to Photorealism, Meisel is responsible for the resurgence of interest in the sub-set of American illustration identified as "Pin-up", and is the largest collector of original art of both genres. Louis and Susan Meisel own the largest collections of Photorealism and pin-up art in the world.
Pearl Alice Frush was an American pin-up and glamour illustration artist during the golden era of the calendar art market. Pearl ranked amongst the top three female glamour artists, along with Joyce Ballantyne, and Zoë Mozert. They were a rare "Girl's Club" within the predominantly male pin-up masters of mid-century illustration: Alberto Vargas, George Petty, and Gil Elvgren. According to the co-author of The Great American Pin-Up, Louis K. Meisel, "Frush's technical brilliance was such that, upon close examination, her works even begin to take on a photographic clarity. Those knowledgeable collectors who have studied her paintings have often judged her the equal of Alberto Vargas in artistic excellence." She sometimes signed her paintings with her [then] married names "Pearl Frush-Brudon" or "Pearl Mann". One of her most recognizable and enduring contributions to American advertising iconography was her original rendering of Little Debbie® McKee, for McKee Foods in 1960.
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