EXTRACTS: Illustrators issue 22 © 2018 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

28 Jordi Penalva If ever an artist captured the look of the iron-jawed, heroic warrior, it was this man. One of the most in-demand artists from the Bardon stable, his work created some of the most iconic cover images of the '60s and '70s. As an illustrator whose images throughout Europe and the USA, Jordi Penalva painted covers for novels in the 1950s and later for war comics and various genres such as thrillers, horror and fantasy. He worked for diverse companies as Fleetway, Semic, Warren, and many Spanish publishers. What distinguishes his artwork is the assurance of his brush-strokes and the apparent ease at painting dynamic figures in action with bright contrasting colours for backgrounds. Born in Barcelona in 1927, Jordi Bosch Peñalver, better known as Jordi Penalva, was trained as an artist in a succession of art schools and finally as an alumnus of Ernest Santasusagna at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes of Saint Jordi. He also studied architecture and even worked briefly in the architectural section of the Generalitat, the Catalan government. He began to work as an illustrator at the end of the 1940s for publishers Janés and Juventud, but his best-remembered covers are those for the seals Lara and Bruguera where he illustrated covers of books by P. C. Wren and Zane Grey, and began signing his work as ‘Jordi Penalva’. According to Jordi Longarón, another illustrator, Penalva’s work at the time already showed signs of being ABOVE: A cover painting to Cowboy Picture Library 465. One of the last comics to be issued in this series as the popularity of Westerns declined in favour of World War 2 adventures. Penalva's energies would be fully occupied creating some of the most memorable war themed covers to appear on pocket libraries. ABOVE TOP: A detail from the cover art to Cowboy Picture Library No. 452.