Playboy 1st ed. | original artwork

'Playboy 1st ed.'

In 1948, a broke Marilyn Monroe was paid just $50 for a nude photo shoot intended for a calendar that was never produced. Four years later, the rights to those images were sold to Hugh Hefner, who published them in the very first issue of Playboy without Marilyn’s knowledge or consent. The result was a striking cover image—beautiful, iconic, and shadowed by the uneasy truth of yet another male-driven enterprise profiting from her vulnerable circumstances.

63 x 93cm oil on linen, signed on the front and framed in a Tasmanian oak float frame