Neon Rose

Victor Moscoso was the first of San Francisco’s “Big Five” psychedelic poster artists to create his own poster series. He named it Neon Rose. Moscoso had approached the owners of The Matrix (the 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. About that 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.