William Andrew ("Willy") Pogany (born Vilmos Andreas Pogány) (August 1882 – 30 July 1955) was a prolific Hungarian illustrator of children's and other books. His contemporaries include C. Coles Phillips, Joseph Clement Coll, Edmund Dulac, Harvey Dunn, Walter Everett, Harry Rountree, Sarah Stilwell Weber, and N.C. Wyeth. He is best known for his pen and ink drawings of myths and fables. A large portion of Pogany's work is described as Art Nouveau. Pogany's artistic style is heavily fairy-tale orientated and often feature motifs of mythical animals such as nymphs and pixies. He paid great attention to botanical details. He used dreamy and warm pastel scenes with watercolors, oil paintings, and especially pen and ink. Painstakingly detailed and confident, Pogany's pen and ink pieces portray the true extant of his talent.
Art Director, Art Department, Animation Department
Nationality
United States
Star Sign
Virgo
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Fact
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Hungarian-born illustrator of children's books, painter in oils and watercolour, author of instructional books on drawing, creator of famous murals, designer of sets for opera and ballet and occasional Hollywood art director. A graduate of Budapest Technical University, he worked for Samuel Goldwyn at United Artists from 1927, creating giant-size props for the massive ice cream factory set in Eddie Cantor's Kid Millions (1934). For the most part, he devoted himself to book and magazine illustrations ('American Weekly', 'Metropolitan', etc.), designing movie posters and advertisements for such products as Palmolive soap.
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Designer of the swimming pool at the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn Heights (New York), at the time the largest salt-water pool in the world.
$950,000