Preview our SPRING 2025 catalog, featuring more than 500 new books on art, photography, design, architecture, film, music and visual culture.
ANDREW EDLIN GALLERY
Victor Moscoso: Psychedelic Drawings 1967-1982
Edited by Dan Nadel. Text by Norman Hathaway, Gail Moscoso.
This is the catalogue for the first retrospective of drawings by Victor Moscoso (born 1936), one of the preeminent graphic artists of the 20th century, who is widely renowned for his 1960s psychedelic posters and comics. Moscoso began designing posters for rock shows in San Francisco in 1966, and quickly developed a signature style in which opposite hues of the same intensity sit next to each other to create a visual "vibration" effect. This book is the first to present the full range of Moscoso's drawings for posters and comics, including original renderings for his renowned cover of Zap Comix 4 (1969), the Hocus Pocus story, posters for The Doors and The Who, and other seminal published editions. These works reveal Moscoso's dedication to expert draftsmanship in the service of graphics, as well as his graceful approach to drawing everything from dinosaurs to spaceships to humans.
Camel (Zap no. 2), (six pages)1968, is reproduced from Victor Moscoso: Psychedelic Drawings 1967-1982.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
The New York Times
Ken Johnson
Mr. Moscoso’s riotous, perceptually and conceptually confounding works advanced a countercultural ethos of imaginative and instinctual freedom whose effects continue to reverberate in today’s artistic culture.
Ken Johnson reviews Dan Nadel and Norman Hathaway'sVictor Moscoso drawings show at Andrew Edlin Gallery: "In the 1960s, Victor Moscoso produced some of the most memorable acid rock posters of the psychedelic revolution in San Francisco. He also contributed trippy strips to Zap Comix, the underground publication founded by R. Crumb. Organized by the curator and writer Dan Nadel and the graphic designer and design historian Norman Hathaway, this exhibition offers a tantalizing glimpse back at an unusually euphoric time for graphic design. Along with vintage concert posters, it presents original drawings, collages and surrealistic comic strips from 1967 to 1982, including several studies for one of Mr. Moscoso’s most famous images: the phallic, tap-dancing, hat-tipping Mr. Peanut, which graced the cover of Zap No. 4." continue to blog
Featured image is a preparatory drawing for Victor Moscoso's influential 1967 poster, "Blues Project." Reproduced from Victor Moscoso: Psychedelic Drawings 1967-1982, the catalog to the fascinating exhibition on view through April 25 at Andrew Edlin Gallery, it appropriates a nude from an antique French postcard. Co-curator (along with Dan Nadel) Norman Hathaway writes, "In Moscoso’s first full-blown attempt at treating a complete text as one single mass, he flowed the letters around the nude form as if they were a curtain aligning with the outer shape of the body." He concludes, "The uncanny feeling produced by the Blues Project poster is echoed in Moscoso’s drawings for this and many other projects. Created nearly fifty years ago, they don’t suffer from any of the usual threadbare psychedelic tropes of that period. This exhibition presents for the first time the majority of the original art Moscoso created for his posters and comix and provides a rare glimpse into one of the world’s greatest living masters of drawing." continue to blog
"February" (1968) is reproduced from Victor Moscoso: Psychadelic Drawings 1967-1982, a staff favorite for Father's Day. Essayist Norman Hathaway writes, "Moscoso began exploring the use of cartoon imagery as fodder for his poster work, and after returning home from a holiday in 1967, he discovered a rolled-up poster on his doorstep that [Rick] Griffin had left for him. He was gobsmacked to see that Griffin had created a poster that also visually quoted Sunday newspaper comics imagery. They hatched a plan to create their own modern interpretation of a traditional comic book. Moscoso’s concept was for them to take turns drawing a single row of panels, improvising as they went along, then assembling the rows into completed pages. Applying lessons he had learned from his poster designs, Moscoso kidnapped imagery from his cherished childhood—1920s rubber hose animation, the advertising mascot ‘Mr.Peanut’ and the classic comic strip character ‘Little Nemo’ – and used them for their totemic power, as opposed to a traditional cartoon cast member or character." The rest is history. continue to blog
FORMAT: Pbk, 9.5 x 10.5 in. / 96 pgs / 80 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $35.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $47.5 GBP £30.00 ISBN: 9780977878383 PUBLISHER: Andrew Edlin Gallery AVAILABLE: 4/28/2015 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by Andrew Edlin Gallery. Edited by Dan Nadel. Text by Norman Hathaway, Gail Moscoso.
This is the catalogue for the first retrospective of drawings by Victor Moscoso (born 1936), one of the preeminent graphic artists of the 20th century, who is widely renowned for his 1960s psychedelic posters and comics. Moscoso began designing posters for rock shows in San Francisco in 1966, and quickly developed a signature style in which opposite hues of the same intensity sit next to each other to create a visual "vibration" effect. This book is the first to present the full range of Moscoso's drawings for posters and comics, including original renderings for his renowned cover of Zap Comix 4 (1969), the Hocus Pocus story, posters for The Doors and The Who, and other seminal published editions. These works reveal Moscoso's dedication to expert draftsmanship in the service of graphics, as well as his graceful approach to drawing everything from dinosaurs to spaceships to humans.
