Alberto Vargas: The Esquire Pinups
Exhibition Overview
Stephen Goddard, curator
Eighty-four of the original watercolor and airbrush paintings by Alberto Vargas (1896-1982) that appeared as pinups in Esquire magazine during the 1940s (from the Esquire Collection of the Spencer Museum). The proposed catalogue will address the material from a variety of (some opposing) points of view: fashion and design; World War II material culture (the Varga Girls were painted onto bomber nose cones); second-wave feminism; third-wave feminist re-appraisal; the reception of the Peruvian-born artist in the U.S.; and the artist's significance in post-war popular culture.
Exhibition images
Works of art
