Rolf Armstrong
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Rolf Armstrong (1899–February 22, 1960) was an American painter of pin-up art.
[edit] Biography
Rolf Armstrong was born in Seattle. He moved to Chicago in 1908, where he later studied at the Art Institute. He then went on to New York, where he studied with Robert Henri.
After a trip to Paris in 1919 to study at the Académie Julian, he returned to New York and established a studio. In 1921 he went to Minneapolis to study calendar production at Brown & Bigelow.
During the 1920s and 1930s, his work appeared on many pieces of sheet music, as well as on the covers of many magazines. Many stars posed for his portraits, including Mary Pickford, Greta Garbo, and even Boris Karloff.
Armstrong's work for the Pictorial Review was largely responsible for that magazine achieving a cirulation of more than two million by 1926. A year later, he was the best selling calendar artist at Brown and Bigelow. In 1930, RCA hired him to paint pin-ups to advertise their products, and in 1933 the Thomas D. Murphy Company signed him to produce a series of paintings for their line.
Rolf Armstrong died in 1960, on the island of Oahu, Hawaii.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- The Great American Pin-Up, by Charles G. Martignette and Louis K. Meisel, ISBN 3-8228-1701-5
