{"id":22908,"date":"2023-06-12T16:31:06","date_gmt":"2023-06-12T15:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=22908"},"modified":"2023-06-12T16:31:06","modified_gmt":"2023-06-12T15:31:06","slug":"the-art-of-davis-meltzer-1929-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2023\/06\/12\/the-art-of-davis-meltzer-1929-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"The art of Davis Meltzer, 1929\u20132017"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"meltzer01.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Illustrators were often easy to miss in the pre-internet days, when paperbacks published overseas could be hard to find or even see. Such is the case with Davis Meltzer whose work I hadn’t really noticed before until this cover turned up at 70s Sci-Fi Art<\/a>. Meltzer had a long career as a scientific illustrator for National Geographic<\/em> but his work as a cover artist for SF novels only lasted a decade, from 1970 to 1981. Not everything is as dramatically eye-catching as his Simak cover but there’s a unique sensibility at work, with only occasional similarities to other artists of his generation like Kelly Freas.<\/p>\n

\"meltzer22.jpg\"<\/p>\n

The Temptation of St. Gerome.<\/em><\/p>\n

The piece above is from an auction site which doesn’t reveal any information apart from the title. If this was a religious illustration it’s one of the strangest I’ve ever seen. Auction listings state that Meltzer’s paintings were mostly done in gouache, a common medium for illustrators and graphic designers owing to its flat bright colours. The following selection favours the more visually arresting examples over generic spaceship art.<\/p>\n

\"meltzer06.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"meltzer05.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"meltzer08.jpg\"<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"meltzer17.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"meltzer19.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"meltzer04.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"meltzer13.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"meltzer14.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"meltzer02.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"meltzer09.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"meltzer10.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"meltzer18.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"meltzer03.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"meltzer11.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"meltzer20.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"meltzer12.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"meltzer07.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"meltzer15.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"meltzer16.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"meltzer21.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 The book covers archive<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Illustrators were often easy to miss in the pre-internet days, when paperbacks published overseas could be hard to find or even see. Such is the case with Davis Meltzer whose work I hadn’t really noticed before until this cover turned up at 70s Sci-Fi Art. Meltzer had a long career as a scientific illustrator for … Continue reading “The art of Davis Meltzer, 1929\u20132017”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,42,48,44,20],"tags":[12895],"class_list":["post-22908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-books","category-illustrators","category-painting","category-science-fiction","tag-davis-meltzer"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-5Xu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22908\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}