Some Cute Tricks by Gil Elvgren

The sweetness of home combined with the presence of mischievous pets constitutes a comforting and charming theme in the imagery of yesteryear. The magnificent creation “Some Cute Tricks” faithfully represents this tender and affectionate branch of the famous Pin-up movement. Always anxious to breathe life into his canvases, the excellent painter Gil Elvgren crafts an interior scene of incomparable warmth, capturing the touching complicity between a radiant beauty and adorable little furballs.

Comfortably settled on the floor on a vast and thick immaculate white rug, a charming woman with a blonde bob smiles tenderly while looking down. She wears a blue dress open at the chest by an elegant cutout, the hem of which is slightly raised, revealing her long legs draped in fine nylon tights and shod in blue pumps. Sitting on a square red cushion, she playfully teases four frisky little kittens by fluttering a bright yellow ribbon from the tips of her fingers with red-lacquered nails. The background wall, painted in a deep and warm red tone, warmly frames this moment of innocent play.

Gil Elvgren deploys immense talent in the almost tactile restitution of the fluffy fur of the rug and the coats of the kittens. His oil painting, rich and nuanced, gives a breathtaking realism to the modeling of the legs while creating a vibrant and mastered colorimetric harmony.