Nieman Marcus - 1967

Offered here is an unusual original poster from 1967. Here is the great Victor Moscoso being commissioned to create a poster for the upscale department store Neiman Marcus. This was for a poster show held in Dallas, TX at an exposition hall adjacent to their flagship store that featured the work of various artists.. The date of the opening was October 2, 1967. This poster is so psychedelic, one can only imagine what the folks in Dallas' fancy store thought trying to read this.  Flowers, a central yin-yang image and vibrant colors obscure the lettering but the overall effect is mesmerizing.

Victor Moscoso was the first of San Francisco’s “Big Five” psychedelic poster artists to create his own poster series, named Neon Rose. Moscoso had approached the owners of The Matrix (a  San Francisco rock club where major bands like The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and Big Brother & The Holding Company played), offering to give the club 200 free posters for each Matrix show if he could print as many others as he could afford, and sell them. They took the deal.

Moscoso’s Neon Rose posters for The Matrix brought his work international attention during the Summer of Love 1967. He had pioneered the use of vibrating colors to create the ‘psychedelic’ effect in poster art. Moscoso said, “The musicians were turning up their amplifiers to the point where they were blowing out your eardrums. I did the equivalent with the eyeballs . . .”

Victor Moscoso also was the first of San Francisco’s “Big Five” psychedelic poster artists to have his posters shown in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His work is in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and in the Library of Congress. The Neon Rose Series of posters is one of the crown jewels of the psychedelic poster era.