John Van Hamersveld
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You may not know the name, but John Van Hamersveld's work is about as recognizable as the rock icons he has portrayed on his posters.
The Beatles. Jimi Hendrix. The Rolling Stones.
He created album covers and posters for them. The most famous among them include "The Magical Mystery Tour," and "Exile on Main Street."
But just when he was at the height of his career in the early '80s he grew disenchanted by the "plastic" nature of the music industry. "The earlier culture was more of a subculture, it was more of a life culture," Van Hamersveld said "then it turned into a corporate world, and we're still suffering from it. We still live in this packaged, plastic world."
So he put his pencils down and walked away.
The Santa Monica resident worked as a design consultant in apparel and architecture for more than two decades until 2005, when he was asked by Eric Clapton's merchandising manager to create a poster for one of Clapton's upcoming concerts.
Five hundred posters sold in five minutes. Before Van Hamersveld knew it, his drawing career was on track again. "A whole world opened up to me that I could actually draw in again," Van Hamersveld said. "All of a sudden I had gone around the world over this drawing I had done on my table."
"It was the welcome back."
Van Hamersveld created his most influential art during the '60s counter-culture. A California surfer originally from Maryland, he designed the album covers for Kiss' "Hotter than Hell" and Blondie's "Eat to the Beat," and created the DayGlo poster for the 1966 surf documentary "The Endless Summer."
As Van Hamersveld said, however, his two greatest works were posters drawn for Jimi Hendrix and Jefferson Airplane before their 1968 "Pinnacle" concerts at the Shrine Auditorium."The Hendrix [poster] is the beginning of my avant-garde drawing style," Van Hamersveld said. "The Jefferson Airplane] Indian is really an icon for the hippie culture of its day: the tribe."
