David Singer
Biography
David Singer (b. 1941, Pennsylvania — sources differ on the town) was a largely self-taught photo-collage artist who became Bill Graham's principal house designer in the final Fillmore West era. A Navy veteran who settled in the Bay Area, he left a corporate marketing job around 1968 to make art, building surreal collages from thousands of clipped magazine images. On the recommendation of a shared printer he showed his portfolio to Victor Moscoso, who sent him to Graham; in May 1969 Graham reportedly studied the work in silence for some twenty minutes, then commissioned a twelve-poster summer series. Singer's cooler, Surrealist-tinged style — drawing openly on Max Ernst and René Magritte, paired with hand-lettered Art Deco type — broke from the wilder hand-drawn psychedelia of Wilson, Griffin, and Moscoso. He designed for the Fillmore West through its July 1971 closing and kept making Graham posters for decades after, later living and working in Petaluma.
Why They Matter
Singer marks the stylistic pivot of the San Francisco rock poster: from the dense, hand-drawn, eye-bending psychedelia of Wilson, Griffin, and Moscoso toward a cooler photomontage built from found imagery and clean Art Deco lettering. Arriving as the first wave waned, he became the most prolific contributor to Graham's numbered BG series and effectively defined the visual identity of the late Fillmore West (1969–71). His Surrealist sources gave concert advertising an art-gallery sensibility, and his polished, prodigious output made him one of the most collected figures in the genre.
Notable Works
- BG-178 (June 1969, his debut — The Who / Santana / Ike & Tina Turner at Fillmore West)
- BG-179 (Iron Butterfly / Cold Blood, June 1969)
- the twelve-poster summer 1969 series that launched his Graham run
- the Fillmore West closing-week posters (July 1971)
- credited with the most posters in the numbered Bill Graham (BG) series of any artist (commonly cited as ~66 across 1969–71)