by Dick Chodkowski – @dickchodkowski
Born in Salt Lake City in 1894, GUY “GIRO” ROWE made it through the fifth grade before his family moved to Detroit where he went to work out of necessity. His job experiences were many and varied, including: railroad baggage handler, newspaper seller, tailor’s assistant, assembly-worker in a Detroit car factory, lumberjack in Oregon and vaudeville performer as part of an acrobatic team. The vaudeville act required Guy to do chalk drawings and that led to his billing as “a boy wonder”.
Jello-O ad illustrated by Giro
With his talent for drawing, Guy found his way to the Detroit School of Fine Arts. Except during his stint in the army from 1918 to 1919, Guy studied there under John P. Wicker from 1912 to 1919. (The school developed a fantastic reputation for aspiring artists, has an impressive list of students. Sometime after 1911, the school was renamed the Wicker School of Fine Arts.)
Guy’s first job in New York was doing still life paintings for the National Biscuit Co. Though best known for his 32 biblical paintings for the book, In Our Image, and for his 85 portraits for Time magazine, Guy enjoyed a wide-ranging career including commercial illustration of Jell-O. He signed most of his works as Giro.,
For more biographical information and a gallery of his work, go to: http://www.gyre-gimble.com/Guy_Rowe_American_Artist/Guy_Rowe.html
About Dick Chodkowski
