I'm listing a number of these cutaway advertising posters that were commissioned by the Armstrong Cork Company in Lancaster Pennsylvania around 1947-1951. Frank Soltesz was a popular commercial artist of the era. Apparently he made 29 of them. All are in pretty good shape and are fairly flat. Some have a spot here and there and some have corners that are bent. Please closely examine my photos for the condition of each one. They are 22" wide x 21 1/2" tall. They will be rolled up in craft paper and shipped in a sturdy tube. I've only seen a couple of these over the years, so they seem to be fairly hard to find. Here is some more info on the series: To illustrate how industry operates, BBDO commissioned commercial illustrator Frank Soltesz (1912-1986) to paint a series of factories and buildings with parts of their walls removed to show the operations inside. Soltesz produced 29 of these cutaway illustrations between 1947 and 1951, some of which appeared in Armstrong advertisements in publications like The Saturday Evening Post. Although Armstrong’s “How Industry Operates” booklet only included 13 of these colorful behind-the-scenes illustrations, the Armstrong Archive contains black-and-white negatives of all 29 paintings. These negatives show the framed image with its title plaque. In the case of the painting of “How An Office Building Operates,” the accompanying plaque reads: “Prepared by the Armstrong Cork Company, makers of Industrial Insulations, in cooperation with the National Association of Building Owners and Managers.”
A celebrated commercial illustrator born near Pittsburgh, Soltesz received his training at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh in the early 1930s. His first big break came in 1945 when he began working on TWA (Trans World Airlines) magazine advertisements. This helped lead to his connection with BBDO and his work on the Armstrong cutaways. During his career Soltesz produced advertisements for a number of BBDO clients and his work appeared in all the major periodicals of the day, including Business Week, Colliers, Esquire, Forbes, Fortune, Life, The Saturday Evening Post, Sports Illustrated, Time, and U.S. News and World Report.
The color illustrations created by Soltesz and reproduced in “How Industry Operates” show how various Armstrong products could be used to withstand extreme heat, maintain cold temperatures, and protect against damage from moisture. The amount of detail in these illustrations is incredible and the accompanying explanation easy to understand. Each explanation included a line drawing of the building or industry being depicted with numbers embedded in the text to help the reader trace the flow of hot water, steam, or refrigerant used in each step of the process.