Pin-up Artists

Rolf Armstrong (1889 - 1960)
"The sucess of Rolf Armstrong's art reflects the poularity and enormous public acceptance of his beautiful images of the idea; American girl and epitomised for many the spirit of the 20th century".
Charles G. Martignette

Joyce Ballantyne (1918 - 2006)
In 1945, Ballantyne began painting, pin-ups for Brown and Bigelow, having been recommended by Gil Elvgren. The firm introduced her to their national sales and marketing staff as "the brightest young star on the horizon of illustrative art". Ballantyne designed a "novelty-fold" direct mail pin-up brochure for the company and eventually was given the honour of creating an Artist's Sketch Pad twelve-page calendar.

Vaughan Alden Bass 
Was a Chicago artist who began his pin-up career during the 1930s. He appears to have been strongly influenced by the circle of artists that grew up around Haddon Sundblom. Bass created his own pin-ups for for Brown & Bigelow, but he was then employed by the Louis F. Dow Company as a "paint-over' artist, commissioned to redo the work that Gil Elvgren had previously created for the company. Dow was motivated by economic interests, hoping to earn more money from such "re designed" Elvgrens. Fortunately, Bass was a skilled and sensitive artist: he strove to leave the faces, hands, skin, and other key areas of the Elvgrens essentially untouched. However, he occasionally had to repaint an arm or hand because it had to be repositioned to accommodate a new over painted image.

 

Al Buell (1910 - 1996)
Alfred Leslie Buell was born in 1910 in Hiawatha, Kansas. He briefly considered an engineering career before classes at the Chicago Art Institute and a trip to New York decided him on art.

Edward D'Ancona
Although D'Ancona was a prolific pin-up artist who produced hundreds of enjoyable images, almost nothing is known about his background.
He sometimes signed his paintings with the name "D'Amarie", but his real name appears on numerous calendar prints published from the mid 1930s through the mid 1950s, and perhaps as late as 1960.

Arthur Saron Sarnoff (1912-2000)
His work was whimsical and engaging and relied heavily upon themes of Americana and slapstick humour. One of his paintings, "The Hustler", was one of the best-selling prints of the 1950s. He was also known to have painted portraits of famous individuals such as Bob Hope and John F. Kennedy.[4]
Sarnoff usually signed art using his full name, or "Sarnoff", or just "AS."

Fritz Willis (d.1979)
When, in the summer of 1946, Esquire announced an important new feature entitled the Esquire Gallery of Glamour, the magazine selected Fritz Willis to supply the inaugural illustration. It was his first published pin-up, and it launched a spectacular thirty-year career.