Earl Mayan was an American illustrator whose early career spanned the era of pulp magazines to the post WWII years alongside Norman Rockwell at The Saturday Evening Post

The Saturday Evening Post

The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...

. From 1954 to 1961, he painted ten Saturday Evening Post covers and illustrated many of stories that appeared as inside the magazine.

Dr.Chris Mullen, former professor of art at the University of Brighton

University of Brighton

The University of Brighton is an English university of the United Kingdom, with a community of over 23,000 students and 2,600 staff based on campuses in Brighton, Eastbourne and Hastings. It has one of the best teaching quality ratings in the UK and a strong research record, factors which...

, England, wrote of Mayan's art, "He managed great visual invention, possessed excellent powers of drawing, and entertained his readers with an inventive set of references within the images".

From Pratt to pulps

Mayan graduated from the Pratt Institute

Pratt Institute

Pratt Institute is a private art college in New York City located in Brooklyn, New York, with satellite campuses in Manhattan and Utica. Pratt is one of the leading undergraduate art schools in the United States and offers programs in Architecture, Graphic Design, History of Art and Design,...

 in Brooklyn, NY in 1936. He majored in illustration alongside Edd Cartier

Edd Cartier

Edward "Edd" Daniel Cartier , was an American pulp magazine illustrator.Born in North Bergen, New Jersey, Cartier studied at Pratt Institute. Following his 1936 graduation from Pratt, his artwork was published in Street and Smith publications, including The Shadow, to which he contributed many...

. Upon graduation, one of Pratt's instructors, a Street & Smith

Street & Smith

Street & Smith or Street & Smith Publications, Inc. was a New York City publisher specializing in inexpensive paperbacks and magazines referred to as pulp fiction and dime novels. They also published comic books and sporting yearbooks...

 art editor encouraged both graduates to enter the field of pulp illustration. Mayan illustrated The Shadow until he joined the army (1941–1945). After the war, his illustrations appeared often in "The Saturday Evening Post" and "Reader's Digest

Reader's Digest

Reader's Digest is a general interest family magazine, published ten times annually. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, its headquarters is now in New York City. It was founded in 1922, by DeWitt Wallace and Lila Bell Wallace...

".

Mayan also worked for Grosset & Dunlap, Argosy, Bantam Books and Random House. A portrait of César Chávez

César Chávez

César Estrada Chávez was an American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist who, with Dolores Huerta, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers ....

 by Earl Mayan is in the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Smithsonian Institution

The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...

, Washington, D.C. From 1962 to 1995, Mayan taught drawing and illustration at the Art Student's League in New York City.

Earl Mayan died in Huntington, Long Island, New York on December 12, 2009.

External links

• http://www.pulpartists.com/Mayan.html
• http://www.fulltable.com/vts/m/mayan/menu.htm
• http://home.earthlink.net/~klavir/index.html