Victor Moscoso Biography

Victor Moscoso was one of the few sixties poster artists with extensive, formal art training. As both a student and instructor at the San Francisco Art institute,   Victor Moscoso was one of the most fascinating artists of the psychedelic era.
Moscoso soon became involved in the poster scene happening all around him.
With his stunning use of clashing, vibrating colors and deliberately non-legible
use of psychedelic lettering, Moscoso's groundbreaking designs for The Family Dog and others helped elevate the rock poster into the "fine art" realm, finding their way into numerous museum exhibitions. Experimenting still further, Moscoso
created a series of posters for The Matrix, called the "Neon Rose" series ,
designing some of the boldest and most stylistically developed rock posters ever produced.
There are 147 numbered posters commemorating Family Dog produced shows at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco from 1966-1968.

Born in Spain, Victor Moscoso was the first of the rock poster artists with serious 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. There, he attended the San Francisco Art Institute, where he eventually became an instructor. At the dances at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco, Moscoso saw rock posters and decided that he could "make some money doing posters for those guys." In 1966, he began designing posters for the Family Dog and 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 was obtained by manipulating form and color to create optical effects. Moscoso's use of contrasting colors and vibrating edges was influenced by painter Josef Albers, his teacher at Yale. Given Moscoso's sophistication, is it not surprising that he was the first of the rock poster artists to use photographic collage. He used clashing, vibrating colors and deliberately illegible psychedelic lettering to demand attention.