Victor Moscoso
Born in Spain, Victor Moscoso was the first of the rock poster artists with academic training and experience. After studying art at Cooper Union in New York City and at Yale University, he moved to San Francisco in 1959, where he attended the San Francisco Art Institute, eventually becoming an instructor there.
At a dance at the Avalon Ballroom, Moscoso saw rock posters and decided that he could “make some money doing posters for those guys.” In the fall of 1966, he began designing posters for the Family Dog and also produced posters for the Avalon Ballroom. Under his own imprint, Neon Rose, he did a series for Matrix, a local nightspot. Moscoso’s style is most notable for its visual intensity, which is obtained by manipulating form and color to create optical effects. Moscoso’s use of intense color contrasts and vibrating edges and borders was influenced by painter Josef Albers, his teacher at Yale. Moscoso was the first of the rock poster artists to use photographic collage.
Citations
Rose, Neon, et al. “THE CHAMBERS BROS.” Smithsonian American Art Museum, americanart.si.edu/artwork/chambers-bros-36440.