I Deal 1950 37x31

Year1950

Hand SignedLower Right 

Condition Excellent 

Framed without GlassGold Frame w/ Black Mat 

Purchased fromPublisher 2010 

Provenance / HistoryThis work is currently part of the Messenger Art Collection, acquired by Silver State Fine Art, LLC in 2010 as part of a broader acquisition of a large collection of Americana and religious works previously accumulated through various corporate acquisitions and owned by Norwood Promotional Products Holdings, Inc., based in Indianapolis, IN. Norwood was one of the country’s largest commercial producers of promotional products and through its subsidiary, Renaissance Publishing Company, Inc., had acquired a large collection of original artwork from the Champion Advertising Calendar Division of Atwater Group, Inc., a subsidiary of Brown & B Acquisition Corporation. The Champion Line was also known as the John Baumgarth Company, which had been purchased by Atwater’s predecessor-in-interest, Saxon Industries, Inc. Renaissance had also acquired the extensive collection of original religious works formerly owned by Messenger Corporation, founded in 1913 by Frank Messenger in Chicago, IL. 

Certificate of AuthenticityNorwood Promotional Products, Llc 

LID161054

Art Frahm - United States

Art Brokerage: Art Frahm American Artist: b. 1907-1981. Art Frahm (1907–1981) was an American painter of campy pin-up girls and advertising. Frahm lived in Chicago, and was active from the 1940s to 1960s. He was commercially successful. Frahm had adequate technical competence for his medium, with a style somewhat reminiscent of Norman Rockwell's, though more cartoony. He was mostly influenced by commercial artist Haddon Sundblom, with whom Frahm may have worked as an assistant early in his career. Frahm's forte was depicting beautiful young white women, taking in rendering their legs and figures. Frahm's depictions of the women's faces are less successful, often tending towards plastic doll-like expressions. Minor problems with perspective and unrealistic depiction of subsidiary figures and objects are common in Frahm's work. Some of his artistic touches were deliberately unrealistic and artistically daring—for instance, his coloring of a city street lemon-yellow in an otherwise realist painting. Today, Frahm is best known for his "ladies in distress" pictures involving beautiful young women whose panties mysteriously fall to the ground in a variety of public situations, causing maximum embarrassment to his pin-up girls and often causing them to spill their bag of groceries. In one of Frahm's noted idiosyncratic touches, celery is often depicted. The falling-panties art has a small cult following as mid-20th century kitsch, or even as fetish art. The falling-panties paintings were imitated by other pin-up artists, such as Jay Scott Pike and Al Brulé. Listings wanted.