Fritz Willis (1907-1979), Charcoal, "pin-up", 1970

Painting, Charcoal, representing a pin-up in the hat, advertising billboard project for Bill Burr Harrah's Casino in Las Vegas in 1973. Private collection. Oversized size 46 * 61cm A multifaceted talent, Willis even played with Katherine Hepburn, in Alice Adams. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, he worked for Warner Brothers as a production and advertising artist. At the studio, he developed a friendship with Joe De Mers, who joined him in creating pin-ups for the Esquire Gallery. 1950 was a banner for Willis. Not only did he start supplying illustrations to major magazines nationwide, he was also flooded with advertising commissions from companies such as Max Factor, Sunkist and Pepsi Cola. Willis painted program covers for the Shipsteads and Johnson Ice Follies from 1952 to 1969 and accepted an order for a billboard for the Stardust Hotel and the Las Vegas Casino Lounge. He has written four classic art-instructional books for the Waiter Foster Company that have been in print for over forty years. Willis's work was usually done in oil on a canvas placed on an illustration board; some of his magazine illustrations and pin-ups of the late 1940s were painted with gouache on board. Most of the images were about 45.7 x 61 cm (18 x 24 inches), but the main pieces could be larger. After his retirement, Willis and his wife Pat, who was his model and best friend, moved to San Clemente, California. He later developed Parkinson's disease and died on January 13, 1979. Biography of Fritz Willis borrowed from The Great American Pin-Up by Charles G Martignette & Louis K Meisel. In 1946, Esquire announced a new feature called Esquire Gallery of Glamor and the magazine chose Fritz Willis to provide the inaugural illustration - it was his first pin-up published, and he launched a spectacular career of thirty years in 1961, Willis received another important order. Brown and Bigelow have asked him to revamp their artist's bestseller Sketch Pad calendar. He designed a new format and design for the calendar and, in the process, created the latest of the great pin-ups. The Willis Girl, although born in an age of rebellion, looked sophisticated from the classic pinup.