Elvgren - His Life And Art
(1998 - Collectors Press)

(by Max Allan Collins & Drake Elvgren) If you like Elvgren's art, you are going to need to add this book to your collection, but you might not be happy about it. The biographical information does not get short shrift, with at least 42 text pages, broken into the following chapters: Norman Rockwell Of Cheesecake, Artist's Artist-Man's Man, The Stevens-Gross Years, Wartime Pin-ups, Brown & Bigelow Days, Friends And Rivals, An Artist And His Models, and Family Man. The problem is that the main thrust of the art presentation seems to be a fixation on the pictures of the models that Elvgren used to create so many of his works. That fixation results in an endless parade of those photos distractingly placed alongside the resulting paintings. Neither painting that is printed across the gutter remains acceptable. Another interesting feature is that each of the chapters begin with one of his paintings combined with a page of tissue paper with a matching image reproduced to show the model's photo or a painting overlay to show the piece transformed into a somewhat different picture and re-used. This 202-page book can only boast of 62 pages each dedicated to a large reproduction and another 42 with multiple art images on them. Again, The List feels the collections THE LITTLE BOOK OF PIN-UP:ELVGREN, Artist Archives' ELVGREN GIRLS I & II and GIL ELVGREN - ALL HIS GLAMOROUS AMERICAN PIN-UPS are better books, but know that of all the 62 'well-presented' works found here, only 18 are repeats. More than half of these works are a sampling of his ad-work, delivered with his near-pin-up sensibility.

Gil Elvgren - All His Glamorous American Pin-ups (Martignette)

Gil Elvgren - The Wartime Pin-Ups

Gil Elvgren: Pin-Ups Diary Calendars

Pin-Up Poster Book - The Gil Elvgren Collection [BELOW THE LINE]

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