"Golden City of Titan" by Frank R. Paul, Amazing Stories 1941

The Museum of American Illustration is displaying 90 works of pulp art collected by Robert Lesser, now a promised gift to the New Britain Museum of American Art:

Pulp Art flaunted unsettling images of violence, racism, sex, and crime. The publishing houses that produced pulp fiction such as Popular Publications, Street & Smith, Condé Nast, and Frank A. Munsey Company destroyed much of the artwork produced for the magazines after printing. The images weren’t suitable for display in homes or museums so artists and auctioneers deemed them worthless. Tens of thousands of pulp paintings were created, out of which only a small number survive today.

Lesser is the author of A Celebration of Comic Art and Memorabilia (1975) and Pulp Art: Original Cover Paintings for the Great American Pulp Magazines (1997), the latter a full-color collection of pulp paintings and history.

The Museum is located at 128 East 63 St. in Manhattan. The exhibit runs until July 30

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]