Taschen's Vargas books
   The Little Book Of Pin-Up: Vargas
   Vargas [20s-50s]
                                                                  (Taschen)

The Little Book Of Pin-Up: Vargas (2015) (by Dian Hanson) This book is only 5-by-7-inches in size and subtitled THE WAR YEARS 1940-1946, it focuses on the Esquire magazine & calendar pin-ups the artist produced during the period that so frequently ended up decorating the American military installations throughout the world, as well as being copied as the fighting-aircraft nose-art displayed by those flyers. Most images are reproduced from their printed appearances, with their accompanying calendars and/or doggerel. Out of the book's 195 pages, 159 of them feature a 'large' reproduction of the art, but they do include 48 that are used to display 24 double-page-spreads, of which only five survive the distortion at the center. The non-art pages are photographs and a biography of the artist (also repeated in German & French). In its presentation, this book ranks below both the VARGA (BLUE) & VARGA (RED) volumes and VARGA-THE ESQUIRE YEARS-A CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ, but know that most of their images appear here as well and 23 new images appear here 'well-presented' for the first time (and one more that gets an even better display). Note that on the spine appears just his name, ALBERTO VARGAS.

Vargas [20s-50s] (1990) Note that while "20s-50s" is on the cover, it does not appear on the spine, title page or indicia - all the same, it is the most common way or differentiating this publication from others with the same simple title. At 80 pages, it is not the most voluminous collection of the artist's works, but it is a handsome one. Specifically limited to the decades before Vargas' run of more playful work for Playboy magazine (but not on any of his work for ESQUIRE magazine), it does take the afforded opportunity to give a more diverse look at his career. Five pages have two images on them and then another 55 pages are dedicated to single large reproductions, though that does include seven double-page spreads (only one of which makes acceptable use of the book's central gutter). Everything is captioned with a title (if there is one), medium and the creation year. There are nine pages of a text biography presented in English, German & French. The paintings are grouped by decade. There are a number of female celebrity portraits, as only he could do them, along with the standard pin-ups and art nudes. For this artist, The List recommends VARGA (blue & red), VARGA-THE ESQUIRE YEARS-A CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ, THE LITTLE BOOK OF PIN-UP:VARGAS and ALBERTO VARGAS-WORKS FROM THE MAX VARGAS COLLECTION before this one, but if one has those already, 39 new 'well presented' pieces can be found here.