Category Archives: Poster art

Art Posters, Music posters, Poster art, Rock Posters, Victor Moscoso

Victor Moscoso — Moscoso’s Cosmos: The Universe of Victor Moscoso. A New Exhibition Catalogue.

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As you probably know, Victor Moscoso is one of the Big Five San Francisco poster creators from the mid to late sixties along with Wes Wilson, Alton Kelley, Stanley Mouse and Rick Griffin. Their posters were a massive influence when I came to paint posters for my college at that time. I collected handbills and postcards of the posters for The Fillmore Auditorium and Avalon Ballroom way back then and I still have forty-one of them (see my previous post to see them all), including seven by Victor Moscoso:

The seven Moscoso handbills in my collection.

I had record covers by Rick Griffin, Mouse and Kelley and Victor Moscoso. My favourite was The Steve Miller Band’s 1968 album Children of the Future, a gatefold cover designed by Moscoso. I lent the cover, along with about thirty others, to an exhibiiton of record cover art at Bildmuseet in Umeå in 1982 and the organisers chose to fix it to the wall with double-sided tape, which tore four one-inch squares off the cover when it was finally taken down. It took seven years to find a replacement mint copy.

Moscoso’s design for the imnner spread of the Children of the Future album cover.

Apart from the handbills, I had a couple of books by three of the Big Five. One of Stanley Mouse’s & Alton Kelley’s art and another with Rick Griffin’s.

Books of Alton Kelley’s & Stanley Mouse’s and Rick Griffin’s art.

So, when I heard that there was an exhibition of Victor Moscoso’s art in León, Spain, that runs from 13th November 2021 until 20th February 2022, called Moscoso Cosmos: The Visual Universe of Victor Moscoso, and that there was a lavish catalogue, I had to get hold of a copy.

The catalogue for the Moscoso Cosmos. the Visual Universe of Victor Moscoso.

This ain’t no puny thing either. It measure 32 x 24 cms (12.6 x 9.4 inches) and runs to 220 pages with 58 full-page prints of posters and artworks. It is a very welcome addition to my art library.

For anyone interested in poster art from the golden age of American psychedelia, there’s a Facebook group called Fillmore Poster Appreciation Society. Loads of beautiful posters are posted there and there’s loads of information about their creators and the various pressings of many. Even posters of British psychedelia poster artists turn up there. Martin Sharp, Hapshash & the Coloured Coat, Michael English and Nigel Weymouth (both separately from Hapshash). I can recommend a visit.

Poster art

My Own Poster Art.

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In a previous post I described the posters I collected in the sixties and I promised I’d write about some of my own poster designs.

I started painting posters while at University, in the late sixties. My collecge, Guy’s Hospital had an active social club and somehow I got involved and someone had to produce adverts for dances, lectures, plays etc., and that someone turned out to be me. I can’t remember how I got elected to this honorary position but it resulted in the production of many posters over a period of two or three years and then, after a long hiatus, I started painting again in the nineties and started doing silkscreen courses in the past five or six years.

As there were noticeboards in various locations about the Guy’s campus, three or four posters were needed for each event. That meant much work late at night. After a while Andrew Batch joined in and we worked together to produce our posters. A few were actually printed by a south London silkscreen firm, but mostly we hung our original paintings.

Turn off Your Mind, Relax and Float Downstream. Gouache on paper 56 x 72 cm.

This poster was not for any event, but was a sort of challenge between Andrew and me. We would each paint a poster with this girl’s face and this was my version. I was particularly proud of this and took it to Gear in Carnaby Street, and they offered me £25 for it! I thought that wasn’t enough and walked way (how stupid can you get? £25 was a lot of money in 1967!) I later paid for it to be printed and sold a few for £1 each. I didn’t make £25, though.

Various stages in the production of a poster.

Here are some posters for lectures.

Posters for lectures by the Physiology and Psychology Clubs.

And some posters for plays.

Three posters for plays and the LP cover and program for a furth play.

Now for some pure art posters:

Some art posters.


Finally some of the posters for parties, dances and balls:

Posters for INFLAM dances and other festivities.


All these posters are hand painted using gouache on paper.

Some of my later work includes paintings and silkscreens.

The Who. Indian ink on paper, 1990s.

Some other series:

Brushstrokes (after Lichtenstein).
Portraits of Andy Warhol (with diamond dust)


I have always been interested in record cover art and when a cover eiother doesn’t exist, or is so rare / expensive that I will never be able to get it, following in the tradition of other artists like Elaine Sturtevant, I can make my own version. thus far I have recreated Andy Warhol’s & Billy Klüver’s 1963 Giant Size $1.57 Each cover (2013 — the 50th anniversary of its original production)

Giant Size $1.57 Each. Silkscreen ink on acrylic on record covers.

Other warhol covers I have recreated include the
LP and EP, the extremely rare box sets Night Beat and Voices and Events.

My Progressive Piano, Night Beat and Voices and Events reproductions.


I hav also made some reproductions of record covers with cover art by Banksy. The most recent being the rare test pressing of Embalming Theatre / Tersanjung 13 split 7″ entitled Mommy Died – Mummified / Hellnoise.

Reproduction of Embalming Theatre / Tersanjung 13 split 7″ test pressing.

I have other artworks, too, but I think this is enough for this post. Perhaps I’ll return to the remainder later.