The Wonderful World of Bill Ward - King of the Glamour

​Ward's world: a titillating voyage into the paradise of pin-up

“Ward’s women reek of glamour and glitz. The opera length gloves, the diamond earrings that dangle to the shoulders, the stiletto heels, the tight satin dresses, the pronounced cleavage... it’s all there. It’s the best eye candy money can buy.” —Eric Kroll

Bill Ward’s long, prolific pin-up career began during World War II when he created a curvy distraction named Torchy for his fellow soldiers. His taste for impossibly buxom blondes—teetering on stiletto heels, legs encased in black nylon, torsos packed into satin gowns—precisely suited America’s collective postwar sex fantasy, and the late 50s men’s magazine boom made him the most popular girlie artist in the country. Through the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, Ward broadened his range to embrace a variety of fetish subjects, but he never varied from his template of the Ultimate Woman—except to make her breasts a little bigger, her heels a little higher, or the satin and leather encasing her a little glossier. 

The art of Bill Ward (1918-1998) has become so rare and collectible that photographer and veteran TASCHEN editor Eric Kroll has had to trawl through archives across America to assemble this broad selection of Ward’s very best work. Drawn from over 600 illustrations and interviews with family, friends, employers, and even some of the women who inspired him, this 344-page, meticulously researched book is the definitive tribute to the great Bill Ward and the perfect companion piece, in size and scope, to TASCHEN’s The Art Of Eric Stanton.
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