Vanity Fair and Fortune Covers
Paolo GarrettoPaolo Garretto ( 1903 – 1983 ) was a prolific
cartoonist, caricaturist, and poster artist who
worked for magazines from the mid- 1920 s to the
late 1940 s. During his peak in the mid- 1930 s,
every week at least one major periodical or
poster hoarding featured an image that he
produced. For Vanity Fair, just one of his
primary outlets, he designed more than fifty
covers and was known as one of Vanity Fair’s
graphics triumvirate, which also included Miguel
Covarrubias and William Cotton.
Although he was friends with Vanity
Fair’s legendary art director M. F. Agha ( 1896 –
1978 ), Garretto was originally commissioned in
1930 by one of the magazine’s editors, Claire
Booth Brokaw (later Claire Booth Luce). His
caricatures for Vanity Fairwere uniquely styled
and defined the times when they were made.
Overtly influenced by cubism and futurism, his
style grew more out of a naïve instinct than
premeditated borrowing. Which came first, a
dominant style or a personal one? Garretto was a
leader not a follower. His covers for Fortune, the
legendary finance magazine that pioneered
poster-like covers, veered from caricature/design
to pure design in an illustrative mode. These
were grand visual statements.
Garretto’s graphic approach was based
on simplification of primary graphic forms into
iconic depictions and loose but poignant
likenesses. Vibrant, airbrushed color was his
trademark, and he also experimented with
different media to create exciting new forms, including experiments with
collage and modeling clay that proved fruitful. Without his superb
draftsmanship, what is now pigeonholed as deco styling would surely have
been a superficial conceit, but his conceptual work was so acute, and his370