Around the World with the Artist's [ Pinup- Cheesake] Sketch Pad. Calendar for 1946.

St. Paul. MN: Brown & Bigelow, [1946]. Spiralbound with all 12 months of pinups. Cover page from Leo Kotzbeck, San Francisco Art dealer and framer.Includes the original printed wrappers, rarely found; ratty around the edges (wrappers not calendar).In 1945, Brown & Bigelow used Munson's pinups for their Direct Mail Calendar line. He continued to produce dozens of pin-up paintings and drawings for the firm until 1949, when he decided to return to Chicago - there he kept busy as a freelancer. - (K O) Munson was born in Oslo, Norway, and grew up in Sweden. His family moved to the United States when he was a teenager and settled in Michigan. Munson went to Chicago when he Was twenty-three to study at the Academy of Fine Art and the American Academy of Art, where his teachers included Andrew Loomis, He later studied with Harvey Dunn at the Grand Central School of Art in New York City.Returning to Chicago, Munson got a job illustrating catalogues for men's clothing and accessories and became on the job friends with Earl Moran. Loomis later advised Munson to consider advertising art as a career and referred him to Outdoor Advertising Incorporated, where he painted advertisements for Milky Way candy bars. In 1936, Munson received a call from Moran, who was then a staff artist at Brown & Bigelow. Moran told him the firm had liked the samples he sent and that he should "grab paint brushes and get here right away".Seven years later, Munson inherited the firm's popular Artist's Sketch Pad calendar when Earl MacPherson entered the service. He revised the calendar, applying a vignette technique inspired by Dean Cornwell's work that produced the overall effect of an intimate studio work. Munson's pastels for the calendar featured healthy, vital women, full of warmth and softness.