Location:Griffin, Rick Title: ZAP Comix #2* Artist:Rick Griffin (All)
Media Type: Pen and Ink Art Type: Interior Page For Sale Status: NFS Views: 2622 Likes on CAF:12 Favorited on CAF:1 Comments:8 Added to Site: 3/5/2013
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Description
Rick Griffin (1944–1991) has become known as one of the premier psychedelic artists of the 1960s, due mainly to his incredible poster designs for Jimi Hendrix, Grateful Dead, and others during the “Summer of Love” era, in San Francisco, as well as his mind-blowing comic pages in ZAP Comix and other Underground publications, all of which cemented his reputation as one of the most important visual influences on the period.
In October of 1967 Griffin designed a poster for Quicksilver at the Avalon Ballroom and made it look like a Sunday newspaper comic page (see additional image below). According to the artist, “There was no story line or meaning to the sequence of panels. I just thought they looked good together and worked as a piece of graphics.” About this same time, Robert Crumb put out his first ZAP Comix and was looking for artists to contribute to a second issue. Having seen the Avalon poster, Crumb visited Griffin and asked him to do something similar for ZAP. Thus began Griffin’s (and Victor Moscoso’s and S. Clay Wilson’s) involvement with underground comix.
Here we have one of those mystifying pages from Rick Griffin’s first issue of Zap Comix (#2 from 1968). It follows the traditional comic-strip format, but without any linear storyline (and not much dialog) to follow. This lovely piece combines several Griffin passions and trademark touches, like iconic symbols of Western/U.S./popular culture, anthropomorphic winged eyeballs and floating cheeseburgers.
The three inked strips are all on separate pieces of board that have been pasted together onto a 14” x 20” page.
When removing glue stains, my restorer discovered that Griffin hadn’t drawn on regular carboard, but on the back of a printed Quicksilver poster (see the additional images).
Completely phenomenal.... WOW!!! Whatever you gave up to acquire this, I can only imagine that it was worth it. A really extraordinary piece of history!