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

31 professionally accomplished, and was at the same level of earlier Catalan illustrators such as Roc Riera Rojas and Joan Palet, and even brought to mind the many illustrators from Colliers and Saturday Evening Post . In 1952 Penalva lived for a short period in Brazil, where he completed his artistic education. On his return to Spain, and through art agencies such as Bardon Art and the Belgian A.L.I., he began to paint covers for various magazines and comics, especially for those published by Fleetway in England. He started painting western covers for Cowboy Picture Library , but soon was also doing covers for Kit Carson Annual , a job that was earlier handled by British artists such as Derek Eyles and Septimus Scott. By the 1960s preferences changed, and the once popular westerns gave way to war comics, and Penalva was called upon to provide covers for the many combat titles Fleetway published: Battle Picture Library , War Picture Library , and Front Line Stories , doing over 200 covers for these titles alone. By the end of the 1960s he was also be working for DC Thomson, more specifically doing covers for Commando . The covers Penalva did for these war titles showed his knowledge in painting and anatomy, which denoted the use of a gestural and intuitive approach to his craft. Yet, he enriched his images by applying contrasting and often daring colour combinations (contrasting greens with reds, warm FACING PAGE: One of Penalva's most iconic war comic covers, 'Dingo Battalion' first appeared on the cover of Battle Picture Library 204, the interior art was supplied by the co-founder of Bardon, Jordi Machabich. ABOVE: Impressionistic detail from one of Penalva's war comic unidentified covers. OVERLEAF: Covers to War Picture Library No. 533, 'Stalk and Kill' and No. 493, 'Flame of Anger'. Both comics were published in 1969 and featured reprinted stories, but the covers were freshly commissioned and had instant pulling power. Text continues on page 42