Gil Elvgren: The Complete Pin-Ups, by Charles G Martignette & Louis K Meisel

Gil Elvgren: The Complete Pin-Ups, by Charles G Martignette & Louis K Meisel. 2008 hardcover. 272 pages, very nice condition.

Between the mid-1930s and the early 1970s, Gil Elvgren produced more than 500 pin-up paintings that appeared in ads and publications nationwide, making him one of America’s most popular and widely viewed artists. Fans of the pin-up genre say his work towers above that of his rivals, in part because he preferred to work with oil on canvas, a laborious technique that set his images apart from those of peers like Alberto Vargas and George Petty.

Post-depression America was in desperate need of a defining iconography that would lift it out of the black and white doldrums, and it came in the form of Gil Elvgren’s technicolor fantasies of the American dream. His technique, which earned him a reputation as "The Norman Rockwell of cheesecake," involved photographing models and then painting them into gorgeous hyper-reality, with longer legs, more flamboyant hair and gravity-defying busts, and in the process making them the perfect morale-boosting eye candy for every homesick private. A fantastic Tashen book.