Tag: Rolf Armstrong

Rolf Armstrong’s luminous portraits of famous actresses and idealized girls-next-door made him one of the highest paid commercial artists in America. Widely considered the “Father of Pin-Up Artists,” his first calendar pin-up, created in 1919, defined the vision of feminine beauty for the next forty years. Today, the very same characteristics that defined Armstrong’s art in the first place—grace, vibrancy, and an indescribable lifelike quality—are attracting a growing number of modern art devotees everywhere.

Earl Moran was a master of pastels, though he showed little if any influence of reigning Brown & Bigelow star Rolf Armstrong, whose domain he encroached upon in the ’30s. Prolific Moran, Iowa-born, a Chicago Art Institute attendee, was soon a superstar himself, creating lively, sexy girls whose relationship with the viewer was seldom a teasing one. Unlike Gil Elvgren and others, Moran did not continually re-work one type of situation, and his pin-ups have more variety than any other major contributor to the field.

Although best known for his pin-ups, his work for Coca Cola and others depicted typical Americans, ordinary people doing everyday things. The women Elvgren painted were never the femme fatale, the female adventuress, or somebody’s mistress. They are the girl next door whose charms are innocently revealed in that fleeting instant when she is caught unaware in what might be an embarrassing situation.