MINNEAPOLIS – Twin Cities auction house Pashco Posters will conduct an auction Oct. 2 of what some collectors consider to be the scarcest of all concert posters in the world. Absentee and Internet live bidding for this 385-lot auction is available through LiveAuctioneers.com.
In January 1969 the third floor of the Labor Temple in Minneapolis started holding concerts on Sunday nights, featuring national and international bands. The first concert was held on Feb. 2, 1969 and featured the Greatful Dead. The hall was packed and people were turned away at the door. Community News, a local company, began doing the light shows for the concerts, using makeshift movie screens draped across the back of the stage, as well as the posters, handbills, tickets and even croud control for the events. The concerts at the Labor Temple came to an end in the mid-1970s, but not before dozens of famous established and rising artists played the stage. And for every concert Juryj “George” Ostroushko designed, printed and distributed a small set of promotional posters. These posters were typically discarded, and are highly sought after by collectors worldwide.
Ostroushko is a Twin Cities artist with a passion for music. As part of his company Community News, his job was to create images and effects for the light show for each concert at the Minneapolis Labor Temple. He was always trying new effects with gels, oils, lights, screens and drapes, and he designed (and sometimes even printed) each main poster for every concert.
Ostroushko traveled to San Francisco in the heyday of the Haight-Ashbury and Fillmore era. He knew many other posters artists, and they shared their works. His influences can be seen in the likes of Fillmore and Avalon posters, just as they influenced his work. He is a true artist of the psychedelic era and continues his passion for fine art and music to this day.
Nearly 20 of the rare posters from the Labor Temple events are coming to auction on Oct. 2, including a one-of-a-kind Grand Opening Night Grateful Dead poster (above). Also included in this auction are many rare ’60s and ’70s psychedelic-era posters ranging from the Beatles to Frank Zappa. Collectors will be excited to see the fine set of ’60 s Pandora Production posters, including Love Is A Flower and one of the rarest Beatles posters in existence.
The Beatles poster came about when in 1969, an unmarked envelope showed up in Pandora Productions mailbox. It contained a photograph of the Beatles near the River Thames. The team at Pandora decided to create a poster from it and the rest is history. Not many of these were made available, and Pashco Poster purchased the remaining lot – some of the last in the Pandora Collection.
As an authorized agent for both David Byrd and Arnold Skolnick, the PashCo Posters auction also includes a rare, signed and original Skolnick Woodstock poster that is expected to bid well into the thousands, and a new set of Byrd-inspired rock Giclee’s, and vintage posters and ephemera including Fillmore and Avalon Family Dog posters, and vintage blacklight posters.