Alumni Profile:  Victor Moscoso A’57

Victor Moscoso A’57 was born in Galicia, Spain in 1936.  His family immigrated to Brooklyn in 1940.  He attended the New York High School of Industrial Art.  He graduated from The Cooper Union School of Art in 1957 and then attended Yale were he earned a B.A. in Art in 1959.  He earned his Masters degree at San Francisco Art Institute in 1961.

Victor Moscoso is known for his Sixties-era acid-rock posters, his many record album covers and his comic strips published in Zap Comix,  an underground publication founded by R. Crumb.   He was a contributor to Zap Comix for 46 years.  He began producing chromatically electric posters for the Grateful Dead, the Doors and other bands in 1966.  Many of the posters have elements that appear to vibrate. The vibration is achieved by choosing hues that are opposite one another on the color wheel and have equal value and intensity.  The human brain perceives vibration because the two colors compete for the brain’s focus. The posters also have hand-drawn lettering.  Victor gives negative space as much weight as the positive space in his unique letterform writing.  Between 1967 and 1970, Victor designed over one hundred posters for rock music icons.

Victor Moscoso’s work is in the collections of The Louvre, The Museum of Modern Art, The Tate Modern, The Whitney Museum of American Art and others.

Awards

Victor Moscoso received the CUAA Augustus Saint-Gauden’s Award in 2017 and was inducted into The Cooper Union hall of Fame in 2017.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

• The Complete Zap Comix, Fantagraphics, Seattle, WA.  2014.
• Sex, Drugs & Optical Illusions, Fantagraphics, Seattle, WA.  2006.
• The Art of Rock Posters from Presley to Punk, Abbeville Press, New York, NY.  1999.
• Moscoso Comix, Electric City Comix, Woodacre, CA.  1989.
• Moscoso Comix, Futuropolis, Paris, France.  1979.
• Cosmic Color Comics, self-published, San Francisco, CA.  1971.
• Zap Comix, various publishers.  1968 – 2014

References

Victor Moscoso Master of Psychedelic Posters & Comix Link

Victor Moscoso, Family Dog website.  Link

Victor Moscoso A’57: Type Confusion and Color Aggression,  The Cooper Union Website Events and Exhibitions Page, March 05, 2015  Link

Victor Moscoso  Psychedelic Drawings, 1967-1982, Andrew Edlin Gallery website.  Link

World Made By Hand, Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York, NY  Andrew Edlin Gallery website.   Link

Jennings, Dana. Raunchy and Revered Zap Comix, Now in a Coffee Table Boxed Set, The New York Times, OCT. 31, 2014.  Link

Johnson, Ken.  ART IN REVIEW; ‘Trippy World,’ The New York Times, OCT. 22, 1999.    Link

Johnson, Ken. Victor Moscoso, ‘Psychedelic Drawings, 1967-1982,’ The New York Times, MARCH 19, 2015.  Link

Rudik, Nicole. Only the Dreamer: An Interview with Victor Moscoso, The Paris Review Newsletter. March 30, 2015.  Link