Pink Floyd at UFO Club, London

SOLD. Let us know if you would like to be notified if/when we are able to find another of these rare pieces.

The Pink Floyd CIA/UFO poster is one of the best known Pink Floyd posters from the 1960s. It was designed by Hapshash and the Coloured Coat (Nigel Waymouth and Michael English) in July 1967 for an appearance of The Pink Floyd at the UFO Club in London. The name of the club, "UFO," was an abbreviation for either "Underground Freak Out" or "Unidentified Flying Object," depending on your inclination. The gatherings at the club were held late Friday nights  from 10:30pm-6:00am at an underground Irish dance hall, "The Blarney Club," located off London's Tottenham Court Road.

The poster depicts a naked winged woman pulling an island through space. This represents a type of UFO or fantasy island, from which various flying machines are emerging (planes, flying saucers, dirigibles, shooting stars). On the rocky island is a city, with banners above it that say: "Night of the UFOs." The assertion of famous architect and visionary Buckminster Fuller, that we should view our planet Earth as a spacecraft influenced the design of the poster. A bi-plane flying below the island is leaving a vapor trail that reads: "July 28 pink floyd."

The idea of "CIA v. UFO" as the title of the poster came to English and Waymouth as a representation of the conflict between the repressive forces of the establishment, and the new underground counterculture. This poster is a silkscreen using metallic inks which were rarely used for advertisements like these. They were printed in very small runs and the OP-1 and OP-2 were printed nearly at the same time as the posters were ripped down and stolen as fast as they were put up!