Victor Moscoso's sense-ational Neon Rose poster series began as a felicitous business arrangement between the artist and The Matrix, one of the first clubs in San Francisco to feature psychedelic music. Moscoso approached management at The Matrix, a young club on Fillmore put together by Marty Balin, in late 1966 with an interesting proposition: artwork and advertising in exchange for copyrights and total artistic freedom. Moscoso, trained at Yale and in-synch with the color studies of design professor Josef Albers, translated the sensual into the visual with his clever, even intellectual, juxtaposition of 'hot' colors from opposite ends of the color wheel. The colors, never day-glo but intense, leapt from his posters to become electric, pulsating images, an effect that approximated on paper the aural overload of concert artists like The Doors and Big Brother & the Holding Company.
The Neon Rose Series grew to include posters for other venues and promotions for film and art festivals and represents some of the finest, most important artwork of the period. The business arrangement ended in 1968, The Matrix closed in 1972, and Moscoso's Neon Rose posters remain monuments to the marriage of pure talent and perfect timing.