The pin up girl
Before we talk about the curvy, sharply twisted, plus-size bikini-clad Hilda, the stage will be set with a bit of pin-up girl history. I’ll take you back in time now, with a short story about some of the most talented and popular Pin Up Illustrators in American history.
Earl Christy, (1883-1961)
We’ll start with the prolific Earl Christy, whose china doll-like illustrations appeared on everything from Hollywood magazine covers and trade ads to sheet music and postcards. His work dates back to 1906. His movie posters and covers that he painted for “Photoplay” and other Hollywood magazines are now valuable collector’s items.
Count Moran (1893-1984)
Earl Moran’s artistic genius appeared on everything from the Sears and Roebuck catalogs to Life magazine and millions of Brown and Bigelow calendars. The way he is best remembered is through his pin-ups. Moran’s stunningly rendered pastel “visions” offer more situational variety than any other major illustrator. One of his most enduring legacies are his paintings from the 1940s of an impressive
young model named Norma Jean Baker. He painted more images of her than any other artist.
Rolf Armstrong (1889-1960)
Rolf Armstrong was another famous Brown and Bigelow calendar artist. After coming home from a trip to France in 1919, he opened a studio in Greenwich Village where he painted the Ziegfeld Folly girls. Later, while in Hollywood, all the big stars of the time posed for him. He painted popular actresses like Mary Pickford, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, and Katherine Hepburn. He even convinced Boris Karloff to pose for him on the set of the original “Frankenstein.”
He refused to work from photographs and was always in search of the perfect model. When asked why he preferred a live model to a photograph, he said: “I want the live person in front of me. When I look at it over and over again as I work, I get a thousand fresh and vivid impressions…all the brilliance, the exuberance and spontaneous joy that springs from a young and happy heart”.
Armstrong’s pastel pin ups of his idealized, scantily clad “girl next door” have a distinctive, luminous, shimmery quality. His paintings of healthy and nubile young women are some of the most memorable of all famous illustrators. He was truly a man of rare talent.
George Petty (1894-1975)
The Pin Up finally exploded into popular culture with the introduction of Esquire magazine’s “Petty Girl” in 1933. Slender, flirty, and extremely shapely, the Petty Girl became an American institution, capturing our hearts and minds for more than a decade. twenty years. From 1933 to 1956, images of her were seen in tens of millions of places; everywhere from magazines and billboards to playing cards and matchboxes, even the “nose art” of airplanes in WWII. In 1950, it was made into a movie starring Robert Cummings and Elsa Lanchester.
Gil Elvgren (1914-1980)
No pin up gallery is complete without showcasing the impressive talent of Gil Elvgren. His charming and dreamy depictions of the nubile female form cannot be eclipsed in genius by any other artist. He was sublimely talented! A student at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, he liked to paint girls who were new to the modeling business. He believed that the ideal pin up was a girl with
a fifteen year old face on a twenty year old body, so he combined the two. During the forty-two years from 1930 to 1972, she produced more than five hundred paintings of beautiful young women, almost all painted in oil and canvas. Today, her fully developed and finished works of art are second only in value to the paintings of Alberto Vargas.
Alberto Vargas (1896-1982)
The most prolific and famous glamor illustrator of all time is Alberto Vargas. The son of Max Vargas, a famous and talented photographer in his own right, Alberto learned to airbrush from his father before he was even a teenager. Most don’t realize that he was actually born in Peru and didn’t come to the US until 1916. He came to Ellis Island via Europe, where he had been since 1911. While
there, he had studied in both Geneva and Zurich, and by the time he arrived here, he was already a gifted talent flourishing. Within three years he had hung his own shingles and was painting storefronts and window displays for New York City merchants.
One warm afternoon in May 1916, while painting a window display for a downtown merchant, he was approached by an employee of the Ziegfeld Follies and asked to show his work to the great Ziegfeld himself. In forty-eight hours, he was commissioned to paint 12 portraits of the major stars of the 1919 season of the Ziegfeld Follies. They were for the lobby of the New Amsterdam Theatre.
From that first commission, Alberto Vargas was a highly sought after artist.
He painted all the major stars of the Ziegfeld Follies and later major Hollywood stars like Betty Grable, Jane Russell, Ann Sheridan, Ava Gardner Linda Darnell, Marlene Dietrich, Loretta Young and even Marilyn Monroe all posed for him.
In 1940 he replaced the great George Petty at Esquire magazine and by 1945 he was the most famous glamor illustrator in the world.
All baby boomers know him as the creator of Playboy magazine’s Vargas Girl. He painted more than 150 of his Vargas Girl masterpieces for Playboy.
He was married for forty years to the love of his life, Anna Mae Clift. When she passed away in 1974, he lost most of his creative drive and worked a few more times doing The Cars’ “Candy O” album cover and two album covers for Bernadette Peters. He passed away in Los Angeles in December 1982.
Now, the reason this article was written…to talk about the plus-size, shapely, wonderfully round, perfectly proportioned, pear-shaped beauty in Pin Up girl history: “Hilda” by Duane Bryers.
One night while searching for curvaceous content on “Google Images”, I stumbled upon Les Toil’s Big Beautiful Pin Up Gallery. I clicked and followed her funny and oddly titled links in search of the well-nourished female images I’d begun searching for that night.
After I was done admiring Les’ talent, I went back to his home page and clicked on a cheery teal and yellow banner with the name “Hilda” written on it. I clicked on it, completely unprepared for what I was about to see.
As soon as the page opened, I stopped and stared in amazement. It was one of those moments where you’re looking at something that you’re completely enthralled with; The world around you seems to disappear, and everything becomes completely silent as your focus narrows, taking in what’s in front of you.
Discovering Hilda was like discovering a lost treasure. I recognized her right away. She remembered her as a perfect likeness of what she had idealized for years in the female form; round, smooth, pear-shaped, plump, and well-proportioned to the extreme.
If one’s natural male instinct is to respond to the roundest, softest, most generously proportioned woman, he’ll understand why there’s so much to like about her. From her long, smooth legs, her girlish face, her plump, attractive arms, to her round, wide hips, you see a vision of femininity taking shape before you. Add to all that her full, well-developed breasts, her soft, supple abdomen, and her glorious hip-to-waist ratio, and you’ll discover that she’s an ideal example of full-figured perfection. The perfect plus size, pear-shaped,
nubile beauty.
Unlike the stick-thin female icons so popular today, Hilda doesn’t have a single angular feature. She sublimely embodies the old-fashioned feminine ideals of “round and smooth.” She is female in grade #1.
Duane Bryers was the first illustrator to use plus-size models as subjects in his pin up art. Sometimes he did not use any model and painted from memory or fantasy. A feat, according to pin up artist Les Toil, “most impressive!”