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Outstanding and classic original K.O. Munson pin-up painting, published by the Brown & Bigelow Calendar Company as part of Munson's Studio
Sketch's calendar series. It appeared as February (either 1946 or 1957).
Caption: We've got plenty on the bull.
Pastel and mixed media on board, framed (26.5 x 18.5), sight size approximately
23.5 x 15.5. Signed lower right. This very work is a featured illustration
(figure 566 on pg. 247) of the best selling coffee table book The Great American Pin-Up (Taschen Publishing, 1996). Knute (K. O.) Munson was born in Oslo, Norway, and grew up in Sweden. His family moved to the United States when he was a teenager and settled in Michigan. Munson received his first commission before he ever studied art, when a local doctor hired him to draw medical illustrations for his lectures on surgery. Munson went to Chicago when he Was twenty-three to study at the Academy of Fine Art and the American Academy of Art, where his teachers included Andrew Loomis, He later studied with Harvey Dunn at the Grand Central School of Art in New York City. Returning to Chicago, Munson got a job illustrating catalogues for men's clothing and accessories and became on the job friends with Earl Moran. Loomis later advised Munson to consider advertising art as a career and referred him to Outdoor Advertising Incorporated, where he painted advertisements for Milky Way candy bars. In 1936, Munson received a call from Moran, who was then a staff artist at Brown and Bigelow. Moran told him the firm had liked the samples he sent and that he should "grab paint brushes and get here right away". Seven years later, Munson inherited the firm's popular Artist's Sketch Pad calendar when Earl Mac Pherson entered the service. He revised the calendar, applying a vignette technique inspired by Dean Cornwell's work that produced the overall effect of an intimate studio work. Munson's pastels for the calendar featured healthy, vital women, full of warmth and softness. |
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