Pin-up Art by Al Brule

Al Brulé was a Chicago illustrator whose style, with its painterly technique and strong primary colors, closely resembled that of the Sundblom circle. During the 1940s and the 1950s, he created many adverstisements for major national corporations, most of them appearing as full pages in leading magazines like The Saturday Evening Post. Brulé also painted a number of advertising images that were reproduced as twenty-four-sheet billboards, which lined America's highways or were hung on the sides of buildings or specially erected platforms.

Like so many commercial illustrators, Brulé eventually took up fine-art painting, specializing in Western subjects. He resided in the West and thus was able to live the life he depicted on his easel. Yet even in his Western paintings, Brulé still expressed his appreciation of beautiful women. In fact, he began his fine-art career with an Indian pin-up girl, Buffalo Woman, an oil on canvas measuring 24 x 36 inches (61 x 91.4 cm), which was painted on a Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota.