Notable Poster Artists & Illustrators, “U...-Z...-”

Alberto Vargas
b. 2-8-1896; Peru
d. 12-30-1982

Alberto Vargas is notable as a “pin-up” artist - pictures of beautiful girls that are mass produced. His original paintings have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Louis Wain
b. 8-5-1860; London
d. 7-4-1939

The artist-illustrator Louis Wain is best remembered for his drawings featuring anthropomorphised large-eyed cats and kittens that were very popular in Victorian England.

Wain attended the West London School of Art, and taught there for several years, before he turned to freelance work of country houses and livestock at agricultural shows.

The cat portraits were inspired by the family cat named Peter who was great comfort for his wife Emily as she suffered with cancer. Wain taught Peter to “wear glasses and pretend to read”, in order to amuse Emily.

Author H. G. Wells said of Wain, “He has made the cat his own. He invented a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world. English cats that do not look and live like Louis Wain cats are ashamed of themselves.”

• music posters

Andy Warhol
née Warhola
b. 8-6-1928; Pittsburgh, PA
d. 2-22-1987; NYC

Andy Warhol was a successful commerical illustrator who became a leader in the pop art movement as a painter, printmaker, and filmmaker.

His studio during the 1960s was called “The Factory”, an accurate description of the assembly line of silkscreens and lithographs turning out repetitive images of celebrities and Campbell Soup cans “... the way capitalist corporations mass produce consumer goods”.

Alice B. Woodward
b. 10-3-1862; England
d. 1951

Alice Bolingbroke Woodward, the daughter of a scientist, drew from a young age and by her late teens was skilled enough to illustrate for her father's lectures and for the papers of his colleagues.

Woodward's illustrations for children's books are signed with a butterfly monogram and her scientific work with her signature.

• Peter Pan- Nana Illustration
• dinosaurs posters

Works Project Administration was a New Deal agency funded by Congress with passage of the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935. Public works projects included large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects.

N. C. Wyeth
b. 10-22-1882; Needham, MA
d. 10-19-1945; Chadds Ford, PA

Newell Convers Wyeth, one of America's greatest illustrators, illustrated 112 books with over 3,000 paintings as well as designing posters and ads.

He was a student of noted illustrator Howard Pyle, the father of artist Andrew Wyeth, and grandfather of Jamie Wyeth.