Turbulent '60s Style Posters

Explore our world-leading 1960s Style collection.

The orderliness of the Fifties would yield to a more chaotic and revolutionary tenor by the mid-Sixties. A new illustration style, one which borrowed freely from Surrealism, Pop Art and Expressionism, was more relaxed and intuitive and the first wave of a Post-Modernist sensibility. A famous example was Milton Glaser's 1967 Bob Dylan record album insert. Glaser crystallized the musician's counter-cultural message by portraying his long hair as a rainbow of richly flowing waves.
Glaser's Push Pin Studio was matched in creativity by a dynamic school of poster art in Poland from the '50s through the '80s. The Polish School became known for a sardonic and gut wrenching variety of Surrealism in promoting the State-controlled theatre and cultural organizations.

The excesses of the drug culture and political alienation led to a brief but spectacular Psychedelic Poster craze in the U.S., which recalled the floral excesses of Art Nouveau, the pulsating afterimages of Op-Art, and the bizarre juxtapositions of Surrealism. And the French May Day protests generated a school of propaganda poster that harked back to the Soviet poster and cartoon art. The style would begin to dissipate in the mid-1970s.

Leading Artists:

United States:   Avedon, Galli, Gee, Glaser, Griffin, Klein, Ludekens, Moscoso, Skolnick, Wilson

Switzerland:  Brun, Buhler, Leupin

France:  Atelier Populaire, Mathieu, Villemot

Italy:  Marangolo

Explore our world-leading 1960s Style collection.