Oct 10, 2024 - Sale 2681

Sale 2681 - Lot 176

Price Realized: $ 1,375
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500

AARON FINE (DATES UNKNOWN)

JET CLIPPERS TO HAWAII / PAN AM. Circa 1959.


40½x28 inches, 103x71 cm.
Condition A-: expert overpainting in margins; minor abrasions in bottom left image.

"Pan Am inaugurated America's first commercial jet flights on October 26, 1958 with the Boeing 707 on the [New] York - Paris route. Service from New York to London would follow several weeks later" (everythingpanam.com). The following year, Hawaii became the 50th state, launching an era of mass tourism to the locale, which Pan Am promoted with frequent flights from the West Coast. Fine's posters for Pan Am in the late 1950s and early 1960s captured the excitement of this burgeoning era, and are characterized by their simplistic modernity. In addition to his bright, collage-like design work, Fine was also a children's book illustrator and a playwright. Andy Warhol, who was a friend, designed the stage sets for Fine's play, "My Blackmailer," which was one of only three plays for which Warhol designed sets.

Pan Am p. 317, Huhne p. 37.