Rolf Armstrong (American, 1889-1960) Carmen, Brown & Bigelow calendar illustration, 1929 Oil on canvas 60 x 80 in. S...
Auction amount: $93,750.00
Sold: Apr 23, 2019
Rolf Armstrong (American, 1889-1960)
Art
Birth Place: Bay City (Bay county, Michigan, United States)
Biography:
Rolf Armstrong is one of those famous American pin-up artists who created an array of amazing art work, portraits, and sketches. He was born to Richard and Harriet Armstrong on April 21, 1889. Later, the family moved to Detroit where Rolf spent most of his childhood. He started taking interest in art and paintings at a very young age. In 1919, Rolf decided to visit Paris to study art and literature. He made another trip to Paris later that same year to study at Académie Julian.
After finishing his studies, he returned to New York and started his own art studio. In a very short period of time, he became quite popular for his unique and outstanding pin-up art creations. During the 1920s and 1930s, a number of his works appeared on covers of popular magazines and sheets of music. Later, he became famous for making celebrity portraits. Some of his notable celebrity portraits include Greta Garbo, Boris Karloff, and Mary Pickford.
In 1921, Rolf Armstrong took up a course at Minneapolis to learn more about calendar art production. He studied this at Brown & Bigelow. In 1926, Armstrong’s work was widely popular throughout magazines and calendars. Later in 1927, he became one of the most popular calendar artists. During the early 1930s, he was hired by RCA to create calendar paint pin-ups exclusively for their advertisements. In 1960, Rolf Armstrong took his last breath on the Oahu Island of Hawaii. Even today, he is one of the best pin-up artists in our country.
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