ART & ARTISTS: Fortune magazine

Monday 11 January 2021

Fortune magazine - part 3

Fortune is an American multinational business magazine headquartered in New York City. The publication was founded by Henry Luce in 1929. The magazine competes with Forbes and Bloomberg Businessweek in the national business magazine category and distinguishes itself with long, in-depth feature articles.

The magazine regularly publishes ranked lists, including the Fortune 500, a ranking of companies by revenue that it has published annually since 1955. The magazine is also known for its annual Fortune Investor’s Guide.

At a time when business publications were little more than numbers and statistics printed in black and white, Fortune was an oversized 11”×14" using creamy heavy paper, and art on a cover printed by a special process. Fortune was also noted for its photography, featuring the work of Margaret Bourke-White, Ansel Adams, and others.

During the Great Depression, the magazine developed a reputation for its social conscience. From its launch in 1930 to 1978, Fortune was published monthly. In January 1978, it began publishing biweekly. In October 2009, citing declining advertising revenue and circulation, Fortune began publishing every three weeks. As of 2018, Fortune is published 14 times a year.

For earlier Fortune covers, see parts 1 & 2 also.

This is part 3 of 6-part series on Fortune magazine:

1938 December, cover by Antonio Petruccelli

1939 January, cover by Henry Kreis

Henry Kreis (1899–1963) was an American sculptor. He studied at the State School of Applied Arts in Munich, Germany. In 1947, he created the Wise virgins and Foolish virgins medal for the Society of Medalists. In 1935 Kreis designed the Connecticut Tercentenary half dollar and in 1936 the Bridgeport, Connecticut, Centennial half dollar.

1939 February, cover by Thomas Benrimo

1939 March, cover by Hans Barschel

1939 April, cover by Charles Sheeler

Charles Sheeler (1883 - 1965) was born in Philadelphia. His education included instruction in industrial drawing and the applied arts at the School of Industrial Art in Philadelphia (1900–1903), followed by a traditional training in drawing and painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1903–6). He found early success as a painter and exhibited at the Macbeth Gallery in 1908. He realised that he would not be able to make a living with Modernist painting; instead, he took up commercial photography, focusing particularly on architectural subjects. Sheeler painted using a technique that complemented his photography and has been described as “quasi-photographic". He was a self-proclaimed Precisionist, a term that emphasised the linear precision he employed in his depictions. As in his photographic works, his subjects were generally material things such as machinery and structures.

1939 May, cover by John O'Hara Cosgrave

1939 June, cover by Francis Brennan

Francis Brennan (1910c - 1992) studied at the University of Wisconsin and the Chicago Art Institute. Starting at Conde Nast in 1933 he became art director of British Vogue and House and Garden. Joining Life in 1937, he then became art director of Fortune and from 1947 to 1961 was art adviser to the editor in chief of Time, Life and Fortune. He later was a vice president of McCann-Erickson advertising agency, and a freelance consultant. He was an assistant to McCall's president from 1966 to 1968 and then a Newsweek design consultant until 1975.

1939 August, cover by Hans Barschel

1939 September, cover by Herbert Bayer

Herbert Bayer (1900 - 1985) Artistic polymath Herbert Bayer was one of the Bauhaus’s most influential students, teachers, and proponents, advocating the integration of all arts throughout his career. Bayer began his studies as an architect in 1919 in Darmstadt. From 1921 to 1923 he attended the Bauhaus in Weimar, studying mural painting with Vasily Kandinsky and typography, creating the Universal alphabet, a typeface consisting of only lowercase letters that would become the signature font of the Bauhaus. In 1938 Bayer emigrated to the United States and remained in America working as a graphic designer for the remainder of his career.

1939 October, cover by Antonio Petruccelli

1939 November, cover by Frederick Chance

Frederick (Fred) Chance (1911 - 1919) was active in the field of illustration for over fifty years in Philadelphia and New York. He created covers for Vogue magazine in the early 1930s and was still active in magazine cover work in the late 1980s. He purportedly lived to be 109 years of age.

1940 January, cover by Allen Saalburg

Allen Russell Saalburg (1899–1987) was an American painter, illustrator, and screen printer born in Rochelle, Illinois. He studied at the Art Student League of New York before working in advertising and magazine illustration in the 1920s. During the 1930s he had regular shows of screenprints on glass (his speciality) and wall panels, and directed a mural division of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), in New York City, overseeing murals in the Central Park Zoo and other New York locations. His murals in the Arsenal of Central Park survive today. His works can be found in the institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

1940 February, cover by Antonio Petruccelli

1940 March, cover by Frederick Chance

1940 April, cover by Paolo Garretto

1940 May, cover by S.W. Crane

Stanley William Crane (1905 - 1973).

No other information was found for S.W. Crane.

1940 6 June

1940 July, cover by Allen Saalburg

1940 October, cover by John F. Wilson

1940 December, cover by Charles Sheeler

1941 February, cover by George Giusti.
(WWII theme)

George Giusti (1908 - 1990) was born in Milan, Italy. He studied at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan and did graphic design there before deciding to move to Zürich, Switzerland, where he opened a design studio, which he operated for seven years. While on a visit to the United States in 1938, Giusti was induced to stay by the several excellent commissions that were offered to him, including the opportunity to collaborate with Herbert Matter on the design of the Swiss pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Giusti is well known in Europe and America for his architecture and sculpture, as well as his graphics. Over the years, Giusti garnered more than ten gold and silver medals and eighty other awards and citations.

1941 April, cover by Boris Artzybasheff
(WWII theme)

Boris Artzybasheff (1899-1965) Born In Kharkov, Russia. He fought with anti-communist White Russians before emigrating to America. A chameleon, able to adapt different styles, from children's books to portraits. Renowned for his ability to turn machines into living beings. Advisor to the Psychological Warfare branch during WW II. A profuse illustrator for mainstream magazines: Life, Fortune, and Time (producing over two hundred covers for the latter). He illustrated fifty books. He did many illustrations for advertising; for Xerox, Shell Oil, Pan Am, Casco Power Tools, Alcoa Steamship lines, Parke Davis, Avco Manufacturing, Scotch Tape, Wickwire Spencer Steele, Vultee Aircraft, World Airways, and Parker Pens. Mechanics Illustrated profiled him with a cover story in 1954, "When Machines Come to Life.”

Note: A series on the works of Boris Artzybasheff can be found in the index of this blog.

1941 May, cover by Antonio Petruccelli

1941 November, cover by George Giusti
(WWII theme)

1941 December, cover by Fernand Leger

Fernand Léger (1881 – 1955) was born in 1881 in Argentan, France. After an apprenticeship with an architect in Caen between 1897 to 1899, Léger settled in Paris in 1900 and supported himself as an architectural draftsman. He was refused entrance to the École des Beaux-Arts but nevertheless attended classes there beginning in 1903; he also studied at the Académie Julian. Léger opened an atelier with Amédée Ozenfant in 1924 and in 1925 presented his first murals at Le Corbusier’s Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau at the Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs. In 1931 he visited the United States for the first time. In 1935 the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Art Institute of Chicago presented an exhibition of his work. Léger lived in the United States from 1940 to 1945 but returned to France after the war. In the decade before his death, Léger’s wide-ranging projects included book illustrations, monumental figure paintings and murals, stained-glass windows, mosaics, polychrome ceramic sculptures, and set and costume designs. In 1955 he won the Grand Prize at the São Paulo Bienal. Léger died on August 17 of that year at his home in Gif-sur-Yvette, France. The Musée Fernand Léger was inaugurated in 1960 in Biot, France.

Note: A series on the works of Fernand Léger can be found in the index of this blog.

1942 February, cover by Herbert Matter
(WWII theme)

Herbert Matter (1907 - 1984) was a Swiss-born American photographer and graphic designer known for his innovative use of photomontage in posters. Matter also photographed the unique personalities of his friends Alexander Calder and Alberto Giacometti at work in their studios. Born in Engelberg, Switzerland, he went on to study painting under Fernand Leger and Amédée Ozenfant in Paris, before working as an assistant to the famed architect Le Corbusier. During the early 1930s, Matter established his career in design with the posters he created for the Swiss National Tourist Office. Moving to New York in 1936, the artist worked as a freelance photographer for a number of magazines including Vogue, before being signed exclusively by Condé Nast. In the decades that followed, Matter took on many roles, including working as a design consultant for both the furniture company Knoll and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

1942 May, cover by Hans Barschel
"The War of Ships" (WWII theme)

1942 June, cover by Herbert Bayer

1942 July, cover by John Atherton
"July 4th & WWII theme"

1942 August, cover by George Giusti
"The U.S. Navy" (WWII theme)

1942 September ,cover by Allen Saalburg
"The Service of Supply" (WWII theme)

1942 October, cover by Peter Piening
"Steel. Allocations & Scrap" (WWII theme)

1942 November, cover by Francis Criss
"The Railroads Learn from War" (WWII theme)

Francis Hyman Criss (1901 - 1973) was an American painter. Criss's style is associated with the American Precisionists like Charles Demuth and his friend Charles Sheeler. Criss was born in London and immigrated with his family at age four. He attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1917 to 1921 on a scholarship, and later the Art Students League of New York and the Barnes Foundation. The work from his best-known years, the 1930s and 1940s, is characterised by imagery of the urban environment, such as elevated subway tracks, skyscrapers, streets, and bridges.

1942 December, cover by John Atherton
"Christmas theme"

John Atherton. Born in Brainerd, Minnesota in 1900. After serving in the Navy for a year during World War I he enrolled in in the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Though he had always intended to be a fine artist, Atherton’s first jobs were for commercial art firms. In 1929, using the prize money won for a painting he entered in an art competition, Atherton and his wife moved to New York City. Though the economic situation was difficult in those years, he managed to keep going by taking commissions for magazine illustrations, and over the years he would illustrate more than forty covers for The Saturday Evening Post.

In 1938, an artist friend suggested that he use the same flat, decorative style as his commercial work for his gallery paintings. This was a breakthrough for Atherton; soon afterwards he held a one-man show at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York, and his paintings began to be collected by museums including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

1943 January, cover by Bernard La Motte
"The New A.E.F." (American Expeditionary Force WWII theme)

1943 February, cover by Herbert Bayer
"Moving the Stuff of Production" (WWII theme)

1943 April, cover by Boris Artzybasheff
"Engineering the House"

1943 May, cover by Allen Saalburg
"China's Last Lifeline" (WWII theme)

1943 June, cover by John Atherton
"The War on the Farm" (WWII theme)

1943 July,
"Electronics"

1943 August,
"Festung Europa"

1943 September cover by Herbert Matter
"Seal of the United States"

1943 October, cover by Herbert Matter

1943 November cover by Peter Vardo
"Traffic in the Air"

1943 December (Christmas theme)

1944 January, cover by Peter Vardo
"City Planning"

1944 February, cover by Peter Vardo and Antonio Petruccelli
"Army Air Training" (WWII theme)

1944 May, cover by Peter Piening
"World Trade and Communication"

1944 June, cover by Peter Piening
"Middle East Oil"

M. Peter Piening (1908 - 1977) born in Grabow, Germany, was a German-American graphic designer as well as professor of advertising design and director of the design centre at Syracuse University. Piening spent his early career freelancing as an illustrator and artist for various publishing companies, eventually settling in Paris to work for Conde-Nast's French publication of Vogue. In 1934 he moved to the United States to work in Conde-Nast's New York City office. For the next two decades, Piening worked for many important advertising agencies and magazine publishers, including the N. W. Ayer and J. Walker Thompson agencies and Life and Fortune magazines. As art director for Life in the 1930s and for Fortune in the 1940s, Piening completely redesigned the layout of each magazine. He also redesigned the layouts for thirty-four other major American magazines, including Town & Country and Cosmopolitan.