Alton Kelley

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Alton Kelley (born June 17, 1940 in Houlton , Maine , † June 1, 2008 in Petaluma , California ) was an American artist who specialized in psychedelic art .

biography

Kelley spent his youth in Connecticut , where he completed an apprenticeship as a welder . He then worked for a while as a welder in a helicopter factory in Stratford .

Advertising poster by Alfons Mucha , template for Kelley's The Girl with green Hair

In the 1960s he joined the young hippie movement and met Stanley Mouse in Haight-Ashbury in 1965 , with whom he formed a lifelong collaboration. The two first works were concert posters for the Fillmore West in San Francisco. Your psychedelic style should have a formative effect on other artists of the hippie era. One of the first pieces of work for a Big Brother and the Holding Company concert in the Avalon Ballroom featured the logo of Zig-Zag, a brand of cigarette paper that was primarily used for rolling marijuana cigarettes at the time. For another concert of this and the Jim Kweskin Jug Band , he used a cigarette advertisement by the Art Nouveau artist Alfons Mucha as a template. The classic logo of the Grateful Dead also came from the pen of the two artists. In addition to the concert posters, they also designed album covers, etc. a. for Grateful Deads Workingman's Dead and American Beauty .

The style of the two had a formative influence on youth cultures well into the 1980s. Many of the works count as classics and have been varied again and again. Among other things, the two have worked for musicians such as Jimi Hendrix , the Steve Miller Band , Quicksilver Messenger Service and Journey .

With the end of the psychedelic era, Kelley began drawing hot rods and custom cars and marketing them as t-shirts and other merchandise products. He died on June 8th, 2008 after a long illness.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Corant.com: Alton Kelley Dies; Psychedelic Artist ( Memento from June 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Ken Hunt: Alton Kelley (1940-2008)
  3. ↑ a b Allaboutjazz.com: '60s Psychedelia Artist Alton Kelley Passes Away ( Memento from January 2, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Kelley, Alton
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American artist
DATE OF BIRTH June 17, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Houlton , Maine
DATE OF DEATH June 1, 2008
Place of death Petaluma , California