Ecco, sì.
Era lui, il centenario dell’Arizona, e se n’è andato da poco, il 1° giugno; avrebbe compiuto fra un mese tanti anni quanti i dalmati della famosa Carica.
Ribadisco la sua presenza a distanza di una settimana dalla presentazione fattane in questo blog.

Era il pittor-illustratore Duane Bryers; non si può pretendere che in Italia conosciamo tutti gli artisti di Oltreoceano, lui compreso. Era particolarmente abile nel disegno delle donnine (pin-up), benché non avesse la fama di un Vargas o di un Aslan.

Il cronista Kimberly Matas del giornale Arizona Daily Star ne ha sintetizzato a grandi linee le tappe della vita affascinante e riportando il seguente giudizio critico:

“He was a terrific artist. He had varied interests in art from the very modern to the Masters. He was very knowledgeable in all facets of art,” said Tucsonan Stuart Johnson, owner of Settlers West Galleries. He began showing Bryers’ work in 1977.

“Most of the paintings had a tinge of humor with them. They always kind of made you smile when you looked at the painting,” Johnson said.

That quality was most evident with the artist’s happy-go-lucky calendar girls. Bryers was the Norman Rockwell of pinup art, with his zaftig beauty, the oft-bikini-clad “Hilda,” taking center canvas. He began producing his Hilda collection in the mid-1950s.

“I got the idea for a plumpy gal pinup and thought I’d like to make it into a calendar series,” Bryers said. “But how was I going to sell a plump girl?”

He took his series to Brown & Bigelow, then the country’s top calendar maker, and “they reluctantly put it in the line and figured it would last a short time,” he said. “It went on for 36 years.”

Come i più arguti visitors avranno certamente capito, Bryers era divenuto famoso (almeno dalle parti sue) come illustratore di un personaggio femminile simpatico quanto solo realtivamente sexy: la svampita quanto audace Hilda, sorta di Angela Lansbury ante litteram, dipinta con vesti succinte in pose alquanto buffe.