When Art Keep 'Em Flying

American WWII Aviation seen through advertising. In 1944 George Grod, a strip cartoon, modeling and aviation enthusiast, discovered with amazement some American magazines which an MP billeted near his village lent him. What he liked best were the gleaming advertisements scattered throughout the pages.

In the eighties, during an “old papers” fair George came across some old numbers of Life Magazine. Nothing had changed; his emotion was still there intact. He started an unbridled search for original magazines dating back to between 1942 and 1945. For many long years, he tried to find out more about these obscure illustrators. All this now came together once again all so naturally in this search in which we see the return of all his great themes - aviation, kits, cartoon strips, the love of art and even the cinema. The book is not seeking to be a mere collection of beautiful pictures all strung together or a sample from a huge collection; it is above all the testimonial of a period, the reflection of that immense war effort the American people made during the last World War, seen through the kaleidoscope of publicity. It is also a tribute to the most glamorous of our liberators.

A child of the Liberation, when he left Arts Déco, George Grod worked alongside great film-makers like Verneuil, Minnelli, Zinnemann, Lumet and Zanuck. Then he made some of the program for the television series les Dossiers Noirs with his friend Jean-Michel Charlier who took part later in the Grands Maïtres de la BD (Grand Masters of the Cartoon Strip) which he created for the Visiteurs de Mercredi (Wednesday’s visitors). He then worked for Ushuaïa with Nicolas Hulot, appreciating in particular the subjects dealing with aviation.