The Pin-up Files

Zoë Mozert pin-up artist

1907-1993

Zoë Mozert was the most famous female pinup artist of her day and is noted for rejecting sexy-girl clichés in favour of depicting "real" young women, with recognizably individual features and personalities


The bulk of her work including such deliriously romantic nudes as "Moonglow" and "Sweet Dreams" was calendar-oriented (primarily for Brown & Bigelow).

Zoe Mozert with model

Zoë Mozert was born Alice Adelaide Moser in 1907. An attractive girl herself, she modeled to raise money to pay for art school. In 1925 Mozert had the opportunity to study with Thornton Oakley and Howard Pyle at the Philadelphia School of Industrial Art. Here she honed her craft before moving to New York City in 1932 to begin her career as an artist.

Although it was tough for a woman to break into a male-dominated profession, her work spoke for itself and she was quickly hired on to paint ads and magazine covers. Mozert would often take photos of herself in various poses then use the pictures as a base for her pinups.

She was an exemplary disciple of the Rolf Armstrong pastel style. She was also the best known of the three "girl's club" artists, the others being Joyce Ballantyne and Pearl Frush.

Her cover portraits of Hollywood starlets for such publications as Romantic Movie Stories and Screen Book were particularly popular, but she also contributed covers to such periodicals as American Weekly and True Confessions.

She also made a mark as a movie poster artist, notably for Carole Lombard's True Confession, and the notorious Jane Russell/Howard Hughes sex and sagebrush saga, The Outlaw.

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