Extended Edition: Horacio Salinas Blanch
![Extended Edition: Horacio Salinas Blanch](/content/images/size/w2000/2023/09/tumblr_pwax46kMBX1sndzdgo1_1280.jpg)
This installment wraps up the three international surrealist cover artists that I cut from my art collection's first chapter.
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David Pelham, art director at Penguin Books during the ‘70s, had a specific aesthetic: spare, stylized, surreal, centered on a single object, such as his iconic 1972 cover to Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, featuring a bowler-hat-clad man, faceless except for a gear as a right eye. He illustrated that one himself, in one night, after he didn’t like the art he’d actually commissioned.
![](https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/content/images/2023/08/sub-buzz-13441-1517862130-11.jpg)
Similar to Pelham in many ways was Horacio Salinas Blanch, a Spanish illustrator who produced the majority of the cover art for Barcelona-based publishing house Martínez Roca’s science-fiction line from the mid-70s to the mid-80s.
Martínez Roca loved Pelham’s style so much that they repurposed his art for their first handful of covers in their Colección Super Ficción series, which published a wide range of translations and original novels.
![](https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/content/images/2023/08/ENSPyOTXkAAmuhq.jpeg)
But they couldn’t use Pelham forever, and starting with the ninth book in the collection, they brought in Salinas Blanch, who stuck with them for a decade. Like Pelham, the focal point of Salinas Blanch’s covers was often a single object set against a monochrome background and garnished with surreal elements.
![](https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/content/images/2023/08/tumblr_o9cilbh84B1sndzdgo1_1280.jpg)
But Salinas Blanch put his own spin on this template with his heavy use of colors, maximalist detail, and airbrushes to create images too arresting to forget.
![](https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/content/images/2023/08/s-l1200--1-.jpg)
The covers were as varied as the novels they illustrated, moving from classic sci-fi subjects like fiber-optic robot hands and spaceships –
![](https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/content/images/2023/08/Horacio-Salinas-Blanch_1_original.jpg)
![](https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/content/images/2023/08/tumblr_o9cgb8YToA1sndzdgo1_540.jpg)
– to classic Surrealist concepts like clocks and faces melting mid-scream.
![](https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/content/images/2023/08/horacio-salinas-blach-we-are-the-mutants-24.jpg)
![](https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/content/images/2023/08/tumblr_o9cinivuqw1sndzdgo4_500.jpg)
![](https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/content/images/2023/08/tumblr_a5667f06e4915dedd3571c311b77e342_53a5ed0f_1280.jpg)
His Pop Art approach also meant a lot of silhouettes, like the spread-eagle astronauts floating out of a space-shipwreck in his 1978 cover to the Spanish translation of Wilson Tucker’s The Time Masters –
![](https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/content/images/2023/08/tumblr_o9cisqzY5O1sndzdgo5_1280.jpg)
– or the Tic Tac-shaped monolith on the 1984 cover to John Varley’s In The Hall of the Martian Kings.
![](https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/content/images/2023/08/tumblr_o9ci4sU3EB1sndzdgo1_1280.jpg)
He wasn’t afraid to steal, either, sticking what’s clearly a Stormtrooper helmet in a cover for a translation to Heinlein’s The Number of the Beast.
![](https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/content/images/2023/08/tumblr_o9cigx9dvw1sndzdgo1_1280.jpg)
Salinas Blanch’s legacy includes Pelham’s influence but goes beyond it, peppering in a dash of gonzo idiosyncrasy to emerge anew, like the figure trapped in a melting ice block on the 1978 cover to Joan Trigo’s Desierto de niebla y cenizas.
![](https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/content/images/2023/08/tumblr_0b6c5dc69c79573c8c2349ed3ea44eac_42067877_1280.jpg)
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If you're looking for more about this artist, check out this great writeup on We Are The Mutants, by Richard McKenna.
It includes one interesting tidbit that I left out of my own writeup: This case of Salinas Blanch borrowing a little too much from Pelham.
![](https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/content/images/2023/08/tumblr_pa8do6ZV3S1sndzdgo1_1280.jpg)