Paul Cadmus (1904 - 1999). American, Painter.

b. December 17, 1904
d. December 12, 1999

American artist, best known for his paintings and drawings of nude male figures. His works combined elements of eroticism and social critique to produce a style often called magic realism.

During the 1930s and 1940s, American artists responded to the Great Depression and World War II with heroic images of ordinary people in the Social Realist style. Paul Cadmus was the only artist affiliated with this movement who devoted himself to recording the experiences of gay people. In monumental paintings at once satiric and celebratory, Cadmus depicted men cruising in gyms and parks. His Fleet's In (1934) provoked such outcry that it was removed from an exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C., in a process that foreshadowed the response to Robert Mapplethorpe's work in the 1990s.

"The Fleet's In"

"Summer"

"Jerry"