KunstGarten

Gillette A. Elvgren. Born in St. Paul, Minnesota 1914 -the most important pinup artist of the twentieth century.

(1914-1980) graduated from University High School. He wanted to be an architect and his parents had encouraged him in this, because they had already noted signs of his natural talent for drawing from the time he was eight, he had occasionally been sent home from school for sketching in the margins of his schoolbooks. Elvgren eventually went to the University of Minnesota to study architecture and design, but also took art courses at the Minneapolis Art Institute. It was there, during a summer class in 1933, that he decided the process of creating art suited him far more than designing buildings or parking lots. Some of Gil´s fellow students were Coby Whitmore, Al Buell, Andrew Loomis, Ben Stahl and Robert Skemp (many of whom would later work for Coca Cola) as would Elvgren.

He graduated from the Academy during the depression at the age of 22. Gil joined the stable of artists at Stevens and Gross, Chicago´s most prestigious advertising agency. He became a protégé of the monumentally talented Haddon Sundblom, who was most famous for his Coca Cola Santas. Working in Sundblom´s shop (Stevens-Gross) with Al Buell and Andrew Loomis (among other noted illustrators), Elvgren contributed to various Coca-Cola ads himself.

Sundblom who had studied at the American Academy of Fine Art taught his star pupil the lush brush stroke technique that makes Elvgren´s girls such glowing wonders.

In 1937, Gil began painting calendar pinups for Louis F. Dow, one of America´s leading publishing companies, during which time he created about 60 works. These pin ups are easily recognizable because they are signed with a printed version of Elvgren´s name, as opposed to his later cursive signature. Dow paintings were often published first in one format, then painted over with different clothes and situations. These new paintings were then republished and distributed to an unsuspecting public.

Joyce Ballantyne was born in Norfolk, Nebraska, just after World War One. She attended Nebraska University for two years, painting murals in her spare time for department stores and movie theatres before leaving to study commercial art. After studying at the Academy of Art in Chicago for two years, she joined Kling Studios, where she painted Rand McNally road maps and illustrated a dictionary for the Cameo Press. She then moved on to the Stevens/Gross studio, where she stayed for more than ten years. Influenced, as much of the studio was, by Haddon Sundblom, she became part of a group of artists who were extremely close, both professionally and personally, including Gil Elvgren, Earl Gross, Al Moore, Coby Whitmore, Thornton Utz, and Al Buell. She was also to become one of the three best known female pin-artists of the period along with Pearl Frush and Zoë Mozert.

She had first met Elvgren when he was teaching at the Academy of Art and she was a student. After years of working closely together they often shared assignments if one of them became ill or if a schedule was tight. Like her friend Elvgren, she preferred to work in oil on canvas.

In 1945, Ballantyne began painting, pinups for Brown & Bigelow, having been recommended by Gil Elvgren. Ballantyne designed a "novelty-fold" direct mail pinup brochure for the company and eventually was given the honour of creating an Artist´s Sketch Pad twelve-page calendar.

Ballantynes most important pinups were the twelve she painted in 1954 for a calendar published by Shaw-Barton. When it was released nationally in 1955, the demand from new advertisers was so great that the company reprinted it many times. Ballantyne then went on to paint one of the most famous advertising images ever. Coppertone suntan lotion asked several illustrators to submit preliminary ideas for a special twenty-four-sheet billboard for their American and international markets. Ballantyne won the commission, and her final painting (based somewhat on an ideal of Art Frahm) became a national icon. Its little pig-tailed girl whose playful dog pulls at her bathing suit charmed the entire nation.

Ballantyne also did much advertising work for other national clients, including Sylvania TV, Dow Chemical, Coca-Cola, and Schlitz Beer. She painted pinups for the calendar companies Louis P Dow and Goes and illustrations for such magazines as Esquire and Penthouse.

In 1974, Ballantyne moved with her husband to Ocala, Florida where she lived until her death.

Joyce Ballantyne biography borrowed from The Great American Pinup by Charles G. Martignette & Louis K. Meisel.

- See more at: http://www.thepinupfiles.com/ballantyne.html#sthash.8chRFPF7.dpuf

Kiki Kogelnik was born in Bleiburg, a small country-town in the south of Austria. At 19 she went to Vienna to study painting at the Akademie of Fine Arts.

Her early work was primarily abstract, but soon evolved into cut out figure forms in space age set-tings and clothing. These early interests continue to appear in the present figure paintings of women. "Fashion imagery relates directly to our fantasy expectations of the world. . . expectations which are never met in real life where people are not perfectly attired, posed, cool, aloof and elegant," says Ms. Kogelnik. "However, my work has many layers of meaning and anyone who sees this merely as a reflection of fashion illustration is missing the point. I am interested in Kitsch colors, somewhat like those used in cosmetics, and, par-ticularly in my most recent paintings. I seem to be dealing with painterly problems of figure and ground in an almost abstract way.

In 1967, Kiki declared that art comes from the artificial. The human condition has undergone fundamental changes in this century. Traditional values and asssumptions have been attacked and upset and not been replaced. Our congenial view of life and security in nature has shattered. The ever-increasing domination of technology and mechanical processes in our civilization have reduced our humanity and alienated us from our natural environment. Hence, the appropriateness of Kiki´s feeling that art comes from the artificial. Kogelniks large-scale works of recent years depict seductively fashionable ladies, slim models in radiant colors leading their self-centered lives before the neutral background of illusion. The low vanishing point permits shoes and legs to have a burlesque life of their own. Beauty turns into ab-surdity and the sharp, erect simplified figures carry faces that are reduced to eyes and mouth. As she once portrayed herself with a gigantic scissor, Kogelnik tailors a life to size for us. The idols of society drop their masks, displayed anemic faces, their bloodless beauty and diassociation with the real world. Behind all this stands the artist with a knowing and somewhat melancholic smile, fully engaged, holding up a mirror to the face of our time.

"Fashion imagery relates directly to our fantasy expectations of the world. . . expectations which are never met in real life where people are not perfectly attired, posed, cool, aloof and elegant," says Ms. Kogelnik. "However, my work has many layers of meaning and anyone who sees this merely as a reflection of fashion illustration is missing the point. I am interested in Kitsch colors, somewhat like those used in cosmetics, and, par-ticularly in my most recent paintings. I seem to be dealing with painterly problems of figure and ground in an almost abstract way."

Exposition PIN ART & CO / Christmas Bazaar