Victor Moscoso

Born in Spain, Victor Moscoso was the first of the rock poster artists with 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, where he attended the San Francisco Art Institute, eventually becoming an instructor there.

At a dance at the Avalon Ballroom, Moscoso saw rock posters and decided that he could "make some money doing posters for those guys." In the fall of 1966 he began designing posters for the Family Dog and also produced posters for the Avalon Ballroom. Under his own imprint, Neon Rose, he did a series for Matrix, a local night spot. Moscoso's style is most notable for its visual intensity, which is obtained by manipulating form and color to create optical effects. Moscoso's use of intense color contrasts and vibrating edges and borders was influenced by painter Josef Albers, his teacher at Yale. Given Moscoso's artistic sophistication, it is not surprising that he was the first of the rock poster artists to use photographic collage.

Therese Thau Heyman Posters American Style (New York and Washington, D.C.: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., in association with the National Museum of American Art, 1998)