Enoch Bolles

Enoch Bolles was an American painter of pin-up art.

Enoch Bolles (1883-1976) was among the earliest and most widely circulated glamour illustrators. While known today solely as a pinup artist, Bolles was a versatile illustrator who also worked extensively in the advertising industry, creating hundreds of attractive color illustrations for products ranging from bread to cigarettes. His most widely reproduced advertising illustration is the "Windy Girl" for Zippo lighters. This work, produced in 1937, has recently been reissued as the Vargas Windy Girl and has appeared in well over 100 variations on Zippo lighters.

Bolles' magazine work first appeared in 1914 on the covers of popular humor periodicals such as JUDGE and PUCK, but he is best known for FILM FUN. In 1923 Bolles became the exclusive cover artist for FILM FUN and continued in this role until the magazine folded in 1943, a victim of the Postermaster General's campaign against 'salacious' material. In addition to his 200 covers for FILM FUN, Bolles painted at least 300 more for spicy pulps, including BREEZY STORIES, PEP and NEW YORK NIGHTS. None of this work was signed and most of it remains unattributed. Psychological problems ended Bolles professional career in 1943, but he painted commissioned portraits and for personal pleasure throughout the rest of his life. Bolles' monthly lineup of all-American beauties precisely posed in wildly imaginative costumes did much to define the future of American pin-up illustration, and remain popular today.

References

* "The Great American Pin-Up", by Charles G. Martignette and Louis K. Meisel, ISBN 3-8228-1701-5

"Beauty by Design: The Art of Enoch Bolles", by Jack Raglin, Illustration Magazine (#9), 2004 "The Art Stars of Film Fun" , by Jack Raglin, Illustration Magazine (# 14), 2005.