Olivia De Berardinis
January 30, 2010 Leave a comment
Olivia de Berardinis (born 1948) is an American painter of pin-up art and erotic art.Olivia De Berardinis was born in California in 1948 but spent most of her childhood on the East Coast. Her father, Sante De Berardinis, was a freelance aeronautical engineer, and his work kept Olivia’s family constantly on the move. Being the only child, Olivia lived in an adult world where she spent much of her time drawing. Olivia’s playful, flirtatious mother, Connie, served as her favorite model and muse. In 1967 she attended the New York School of Visual Arts, and became involved in the minimalist art movement while there. Over the next few years she took odd jobs to pay the rent but continued to paint and began to show her work, primarily minimalist oils on canvas. By 1974 financial pressures induced Olivia to seek out commercial art work, and so she returned to the skills she had gained as a child, painting beautiful women for periodicals and paperback publishers. In a short time Olivia secured regular work painting erotic fantasies for men’s magazines.In 1975 Olivia met Joel Beren and they were married four years later. Living on Manhattan’s Upper West Side they developed a small publishing business, O Cards, primarily printing Olivia’s work as greeting cards. They created another company, Ozone Productions, Ltd. to sell and license Olivia’s artwork. Olivia has had shows of her artwork throughout the United States and Japan, and her work is collected by fans worldwide. Over 200 limited editions have been published, and an original Olivia painting now appears in each issue of Playboy magazine.
- The Great American Pin-Up, by Charles G. Martignette and Louis K. Meisel, ISBN 3-8228-1701-5
Pin-up artists 