Rick Griffin pushed the rock music art of the psychedelic era to new creative peaks -- by turns wildly surreal and deeply spiritual, his work remains immediately recognizable for its richly vibrant colors and inscrutably liquid lettering, with his countless posters and album covers enduring among the most indelible and provocative images of their time. The son of an engineer and amateur archaeologist, as a child growing up in Los Angeles Griffin (born June 18, 1944) frequently accompanied his father on digs in the Southwest, there absorbing many of the Native American mythos that later resonated throughout his work. An accomplished artist since childhood, his talents frequently intersected with his love for surfing, and he often created drawings for local surf shops in exchange for equipment.

Upon graduating from high school, Griffin went to work as a staff artist at Surfer magazine, where he created the popular "Murphy" character; he also created record covers for surf music giants including Dick Dale and the Challengers. Concurrently he attended junior college, and after graduating in 1964 he planned to travel to Australia to surf; a car accident that left Griffin briefly comatose and permanently scarred the left side of his face forced him to reassess his life, however, and after a period of recovery he enrolled at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles. There he met Ida Pfefferle, who in time became his wife; around the same time he joined the band the Jook Savages, and while touring with them in Nevada during 1966 encountered the San Francisco band the Charlatans, whose psychedelically charged live set offered Griffin his first taste of the acid rock phenomenon.

Griffin himself relocated to San Francisco soon after, and in 1966 he created one of his first posters to promote the Human Be-In, the massive counterculture gathering in Golden Gate Park that set off the Summer of Love. He next produced a series of posters for the Family Dog collective's dances at the Avalon Ballroom, followed by a number of works advertising upcoming gigs at the Fillmore West; influenced in part by classic American advertising images, Griffin created some of the seminal images of the psychedelic era, among them a 1969 Jimi Hendrix poster whose key figure -- a winged eyeball with reptilian limbs encircled in a ring of fire -- remains one of the key artistic icons of the period. Other symbolic motifs recurring throughout his work include Indian braves, scarabs, and, most frequently, the human skull.

As the popularity of Griffin's designs soared, he was sought out to lend his vision to album jackets; his most memorable work was done in conjunction with the Grateful Dead, for whom he created the classic cover to 1969's Aoxomoxoa as well as 1973's Wake of the Flood, 1976's Steal Your Face!, and 1981's Reckoning. Griffin remained a prolific talent well past the end of the psychedelic era, later working in underground comix, and in the early '70s he became a devout Christian, a conversion that profoundly affected his subsequent work, which included an illustrated adaptation of the Book of John. His life ended on August 17, 1991, the victim of a fatal motorcycle accident; ironically, his last published work, which appeared in the San Francisco magazine The City, was a self-portrait depicting Griffin entering heaven's gates, pen and ink clutched firmly in hand. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi