Eugene "Gene" Bilbrew (June 29, 1923 – May 1974) was an American vocal group singer, cartoonist, and "bizarre art" pioneer. As noted in the biography, ''GENE BILBREW REVEALED: The Unsung Legacy of a Fetish Art Pioneer'', he was "the first black career fetish artist in history." Starting in the mid-1950s, he was among the most prolific illustrators of fetish-oriented pulp book covers. In addition to signing his work under his own name, he produced art under a range of pseudonyms, including ENEG ("Gene" spelled backwards), Van Rod, and Bondy.

Early life

Born in

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

in 1923, Bilbrew's first career was as a vocal group singer, performing with The Mellow Tones and the Basin Street Boys. ''Hyperallergic Daily'' magazine article, "A Long-Lost Artist of the 1950s Sexual Underground" by Jim Linderman, 5 January 2015 at hyperallergic.com Jan 6, 2015 Pérez Seves debunked the myth that Bilbrew illustrated or produced the comic strip series named ''The Bronze Bomber'' for the African-American newspaper, ''

Los Angeles Sentinel The ''Los Angeles Sentinel'' is a weekly African-American owned newspaper published in Los Angeles, California. The paper boasted of reaching 125,000 readers , making it one of the oldest, largest and most influential African-American newspaper ...

''. In truth, Bilbrew's friend William Alexander produced the strip for the ''Los Angeles Tribune''. One printed page, showing the Bomber cartoon from March 8, 1943, was repurposed by artist

Mildred Howard Mildred Howard (born 1945) is an African-American artist known primarily for her sculptural installation and mixed-media assemblages.Baker, Kenneth"Artist Intrigued by Interaction of Materials, Ability to Revise at Will", ''San Francisco Chronic ...

as the base layer of her

collage Collage (, from the , "to glue" or "to stick together") is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assembly of different forms, thus creating a new whole. (Compare with pasti ...

''Millenials & XYZ #IV'' (2014), which is in the permanent collection of the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation. Four of the six panels are partly or wholly obscured by other elements of the collage. The upper three panels show the source and style. The ''Tribune'' began publication in 1941, but the earliest

microfilm A microform is a scaled-down reproduction of a document, typically either photographic film or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the original d ...

copies begin in September 1943, and the Bomber does not appear there. By early 1944, Alexander was in the Army. During 1941–1944, March 8 was a Monday only in 1943. Bilbrew was then 18 years old. According to Pérez Seves, later that year, at age 19, Bilbrew would evade the draft due to psychiatric reasons and become a founding member of his first vocal group, The Mellow Tones.

Career

Starting in 1950, Bilbrew switched from singing to illustrative art. His first professional art job was for the hugely influential

comics artist A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comics illustrators/artists in that they produce both the literar ...

Will Eisner William Erwin Eisner ( ; March 6, 1917 – January 3, 2005) was an American cartoonist, writer, and entrepreneur. He was one of the earliest cartoonists to work in the American comic book industry, and his series '' The Spirit'' (1940–1952) wa ...

on ''

The Spirit The Spirit may refer to: * Holy Spirit The Holy Spirit, otherwise known as the Holy Ghost, is a concept within the Abrahamic religions. In Judaism, the Holy Spirit is understood as the divine quality or force of God manifesting in the world, p ...

'', where Bilbrew took over the back-up series ''Clifford''—a humor page for small children—after its originator

Jules Feiffer Jules Ralph Feiffer ( ; January 26, 1929 – January 17, 2025) was an American cartoonist and author, who at one time was considered the most widely read satirist in the country. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for Pulitzer Prize for Editori ...

was drafted into the army. Bilbrew's ''Clifford'' was syndicated as a weekly comic strip by General Features from 1951 to 1952. The start of Bilbrew's "bizarre art" career came in 1951 through underground artist and pioneer

Eric Stanton Eric Stanton (born Ernest Stanzoni Jr.; September 30, 1926 – March 17, 1999) was an American underground cartoonist and Sexual fetishism, fetish art pioneer. While Stanton began his career as a bondage fantasy artist for Irving Klaw, the major ...

, whom Bilbrew met while attending

Cartoonists and Illustrators School The School of Visual Arts New York City (SVA NYC) is a private for-profit art school in New York City. It was founded in 1947 and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design. History This school was started by Sila ...

.Pérez Seves, ''Eric Stanton & the History of the Bizarre Underground'', pp. 37, 38. From then on, Bilbrew focused on fetish art, producing work for notable underground publishers

Irving Klaw Irving Klaw (November 9, 1910 – September 3, 1966), self-named the "Pin-up King",Pérez Seves, ''Eric Stanton & the History of the Bizarre Underground'', p. 28. was an influential American merchant of sexploitation, fetish, and Hollywood glamo ...

, Edward Mishkin, Stanley Malkin, and the Sturman brothers. He also notably produced many illustrations and covers for Leonard Burtman, publisher of '' Exotique'', a

fetish magazine A fetish magazine is a type of magazine originating in the late 1940s which is devoted to sexual fetishism. The content is generally aimed at being erotic rather than pornographic. Fetish magazines are usually devoted to a specific fetish, such as ...

published between 1955 and 1959.

Death

While his career waned with the coming of relaxed censorship laws of the 1960s, his substance abuse worsened in the early 1970s. According to

, Gene Bilbrew died in the back of a

Times Square Times Square is a major commercial intersection, tourist destination, entertainment hub, and Neighborhoods in New York City, neighborhood in the Midtown Manhattan section of New York City. It is formed by the junction of Broadway (Manhattan), ...

adult bookstore A sex shop is a retailer that sells products related to adult sexual or erotic entertainment, such as sex toys, lingerie, pornography, and other related products. An early precursor of the modern sex shop was a chain of stores set up in Par ...

in May 1974.

Other

In 2019, the

National Leather Association International National Leather Association International (NLA-I) is a BDSM organization, based in the United States with chapters in various cities in the United States and Canada. It was founded in 1986 as the "National Leather Association" (NLA), as a nation ...

established an award named after Bilbrew for creators of animated erotic art.

References

External links

*
Material related to Bilbrew at the Internet Archive
*http://dulltooldimbulb.blogspot.com/2009/03/eugene-bilbrew-african-american-artist.html *http://hyperallergic.com/172180/a-long-lost-artist-of-the-1950s-sexual-underground/ *https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/04/cult-of-the-spankers-pulp-fiction-times-square-smut
Gene Bilbrew, over 240 artworks stored
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bilbrew, Gene 1923 births 1974 deaths African-American comics artists American comics artists American erotic artists Artists from Los Angeles BDSM people Fetish artists School of Visual Arts alumni 20th-century African-American artists