Artist Martin Sharp was born in Australia and moved to swinging London in 1966 where he immediately became fully immersed in the music and mind-altering drugs of the counter-culture scene.Co-founder of underground Oz magazine, Sharp was flatmates with Eric Clapton and produced the stunning graphic designs of Cream’s second and third albums, Disraeli Gears and Wheels of Fire. This poster incorporating lyrics from Donovan's 1966 song Sunshine Superman, and is very much in the style of the two Cream albums.
Sharp also did the Jimi Hendrix poster, “Explosion,” and the Bob Dylan poster printed on orange foil called “Blown’ in the Mind” and has to be considered - perhaps along with Hapshash and the Colored Coat - the most significant psychedelic poster artist to come out of the London scene.
In a 2011 interview for Electrical Banana: Masters of Psychedelic Art, Sharp recalled “…the Donovan piece was a tribute poster, which I did as an admirer of his songs. There was a photograph central to that, and then I cut up some old Sketch magazine for the theatrical figures around the edges. The artwork was done at actual size, and I just started off and followed my nose, really. I would often work on Kromekote [paper] so you could scratch off mistakes, but often my mistakes led to my effects, because I'd accidentally drop spots of ink on my drawings. And I really loved the effect of foil, so we printed on foil stock.”
Printed in blue and black ink on silver metallic-faced card is referred to as number BO7 in the Big O Posters series. The first version was printed in 1967 with red ink to add depth to the central blue portion. This piece is from the second, more widely known, version printed in 1968 without red ink. Copies of this poster are held in the permanent collections of MOMA, New York, the V&A Museum, London, and the Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney.