Earl Mayan

Traffic Jam
Traffic Jam
4/28/1956

Earl Mayan developed his skill as an illustrator by attending Pratt Institute from 1933 through 1936.

Earl Mayan shed a humorous light on the trials and tribulations of family life as captured in the covers he illustrated for The Saturday Evening Post.

When Herbert Hoover promised “a car in every garage”, his speech apparently hit home with Mayan. Earl Mayan’s first two-panel cover for The Saturday Evening Post appeared on December 18, 1954, illustrating the laborious task of shoving snow off the driveway just in time for the snowplows to come by and leave yet another wall of snow to be shoveled.

In all Earl Mayan illustrated ten (10) covers for The Saturday Evening Post spanning from 1954 through 1961; he also illustrated for numerous stories within the Saturday Evening Post. His topics ranging from a sleepy boy being carried out of a baseball stadium by his father to another two-panel comparison of a wedding rehearsal and then the actual wedding being performed. On occasion he portrayed celebrities such as Yogi Berra eyeing the ball he is about to catch as seen on his April 20, 1957 Saturday Evening Post cover.

Mayan’s works brought a smile to your face as he illustrated daily living encounters.

From 1962 to 1995 Mayan taught at the Art Students League of New York, founded by and for artists, the Art Students League of New York has been a vital, energetic school for artists and has maintained a commitment to nurturing creativity. Many well-known and influential artists have taught or studied at the League.

Mayan’s artistic range was widely recognized from his pulp fiction story illustrations for Shadow Magazine, Science Fiction, Western, Detective to his advertising art for notables such as Roy Rogers and the U.S. Navy stand-up figures. In his later years he focused on landscapes, still-lifes, portraits and abstracts.