JOHN VAN HAMERSVELD. Of all the factors propelling the cultural revolution of the 1960s, you could argue that none was more pervasive and evocative than the era’s iconic album covers, movie posters, and magazine illustrations.
The artists and designers of the time tapped into the same broad desire for revolution, peace, beauty, adventure, freedom, and the absolutely new, as in the splashier on-stage performers.

Among the greatest of these greats is the still-prolific, eternally iconic John Van Hamersveld. His more than 50-year career includes time as art director at Surfer Magazine and Capitol Records, and he’s responsible for a graphics pantheon that includes, among many others, album art for the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour and the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street, the Grateful Dead skull, and indelible images of surfer heaven like the oftsampled, iconic poster for the king of all surf films, 1966’s The Endless Summer. Shepard Fairey has been known to credit his work in these interlaced worlds of surf, rock and film posters as a seminal influence his early OBEY campaign, and JVH continues to make and exhibit large-scale public artworks and editions, getting a hero’s welcome from new generations of audiences.

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