Monumental, Hand-Stenciled 1960s Psychedelic Rock Billboard by Robert Fried

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Monumental, Hand-Stenciled 1960s Psychedelic Rock Billboard by Robert Fried

About the Item

Robert Fried Wild West 1969 Stencil, airbrush on paper approx 21 x 9 feet (12 separate sheets) Commissioned by the San Francisco Music Council for the Wild West Festival Robert Fried (1937-1975) was one of the foremost creators of psychedelic music posters during the 1960s and 1970s. He has described his hallucinatory designs for the Greatful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo Springfield and others as attempts to create a visual analogue for acid trips. This blacklight poster is typical of Fried's trippy astral geometry, day glo colors and pop art fonts. But among psychedelic posters it is in a class by itself for its scale and cultural significance. At approximately 9 x 21 feet it is the largest poster from that time. Fried hand-cut the stencils, and the airbrush work was most likely done in his studio. The billboard was created for the Wild West Festival, a utopian music event organized by artists, musicians, free-speech advocates and the city of San Francisco to present the accomplishments of the Haight Asbury counter-culture to the world. But the event famously crashed and burned due to infighting by the participants. All its expected cultural cache went to Woodstock, which took place shortly after. The festival was replaced by an event at Altamont, famously chronicled in the movie Helter Skelte, where several people died, and it's demise now reads like a death notice for the end of the sixties. The poster, which should have been one of the most famous images of the movement, slipped into obscurity, only to be resurrected by historians in books such as "The Republic of Rock: Music and Citizenship in the Sixties." We know of only four copies. One was used as an actual billboard in 1969; one is in the Brooklyn museum where Fried had a retrospective before his untimely death; and two, including this one, are in private collections.

Creator:
Robert Fried (Artist)
Dimensions:
Height: 9.5 in (24.13 cm)Width: 21 in (53.34 cm)Depth: 0.1 in (2.54 mm)
Place of Origin:
United States
Period:
1960-1969
Date of Manufacture:
1969
Condition:
Colors are Fresh. Some conservation to paper is required.
Seller Location:
Treasure Island, CA
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU79931244868