Chances are when you conjure in your mind’s eye an image of a “psychedelic” 60’s rock poster (whether for fun or because you’re an ex-hippie flashing back involuntarily to your blocked-out youth from within the soft leather comfort of your Mercedes) you are likely, without even realizing it, envisioning a Victor Moscoso.  It’s been said that Moscoso “was the first of the rock poster artists with academic training and experience.” He studied at the Cooper Union and at Yale (under Josef Albers) and it shows.  Moscoso’s own style is, at this late date, damn near synonymous with the form in the same way that you think “band-aid” when you envision of a little adhesive-backed bandage. Likewise though Robert Crumb went on to be the most famous underground artist of the era I guarantee when you think of Zap Comix you think of Moscoso’s dancing mr. peanut / mr. penis cover. I don’t think it’s overstating it to say Moscoso’s style was aped and absorbed by the culture to a such degree that it just seems to be a force of history in retrospect rather than the inspired work of a really talented designer.

To see and read more try: Fine Arts Museum SF, the Neon Rose series & Victor Moscoso at Wolfgang’s Vault, the Victor Moscoso poster gallery, more Neon Rose, the music machine, an interview at the Comic’s Journal, Liberatore: A portrait of the artist as a counterculture connoisseur, and 1960s Psychedelic Rock Concert Posters and the Broadening of American Spirituality.