Peter Max, the influential pop artist whose kaleidoscopic, psychedelic imagery became synonymous with the 1960s “flower power” era and later appeared on everything from postage stamps to a cruise ship, has died at 88. His son announced the death in a written statement Wednesday.
Max died Monday, according to the statement. A cause of death was not disclosed, though the artist had been living with advanced dementia.
After launching his career in graphic design during the 1960s, Max quickly established a signature look defined by swirling lines, saturated colors and exuberant visual energy. His work captured the hopeful spirit of the flower power generation, yet its playful accessibility and his remarkably prolific output kept him in demand well into the 21st century.
Over the years, Max served as official artist for major events including the Olympics, Super Bowl, Indianapolis 500, World Cup and World Series. His art was displayed on a Boeing 777 and a Norwegian Cruise Line vessel, while his portraits featured subjects ranging from U.S. presidents to pop star Taylor Swift.
At the height of his fame in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Max’s large-scale scenes of flowers, outer space and cartoonlike figures seemed nearly unavoidable. Rendered in electric shades of turquoise, orange and neon green, his designs covered dorm-room posters and found their way onto everyday products, including clocks and bedspreads.
He also designed covers for the Manhattan Yellow Pages, the business telephone directory distributed to millions. In 1969, Life magazine put Max himself on its cover, where his broad smile was framed by the dark, bushy mustache that became part of his public image.
“We will remember his extraordinary creativity, his warmth, his curiosity, and the way he saw beauty and possibility everywhere,” his son, Adam Max, said in the statement. “His art became part of American culture, but the man behind that art — the father we knew and loved — is the person we will miss most.”
Family fled Nazi Germany
Born Peter Max Finkelstein in Berlin in 1937 to a Jewish family, Max escaped Nazi Germany as an infant when his family fled to Shanghai. They later lived in Tibet, Israel and Paris before moving to New York City when he was 16. By that point, Max said in an interview, he had already become “a huge fan of American culture,” especially comics, films and “all the jazz music.”
In New York, Max studied at the Art Students League, the School of Visual Arts and Pratt Institute. He opened a graphic design studio with friends in 1961, and his striking visual language rapidly attracted attention from advertising agencies, publishers, corporations and the broader pop-culture world.
The acclaim fueled an expansive merchandising business. “My work was really, I would say, almost exploited,” Max once said. “It was on mugs, it was on bedsheets, it was on dresses, it was on silks and scarves and ties — 70 product lines.”
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But what “bothered” him about all that success, he said, was that he “wasn’t painting anymore.” So he shut the business down for a time in the early 1970s to reconnect with his art. One of his biggest projects after returning to public life was a series of portraits of the Statue of Liberty, painted at the White House at the invitation of first lady Nancy Reagan in 1981.
Max weathered various controversies in his personal and professional life. He pleaded guilty to tax fraud in 1997 after the IRS alleged he concealed more than $1 million in income from his art. He was originally sentenced to two months in prison but ultimately was allowed instead to serve the time in a work-release program, pay the back taxes and a $30,000 fine, and perform 800 hours of community service teaching art in Harlem schools.
In 2015, his family life became tabloid fodder in a back-and-forth between his second wife, Mary Max, and Adam, his son from a previous marriage. The son and a guardian alleged that Mary Max had depleted his finances and browbeat him. She in turn claimed that they had kept him from her against his will and stolen paintings that belonged to her. Accounts of court appearances described him as frail.
In 2019, Mary Max died by suicide two weeks after The New York Times published a story detailing legal battles over his work.
His art had a bright, happy vibe
Those dark allegations contrasted with the relentlessly bright, happy vibe that infused his work. “The colors are strong, sometimes loud, sometimes raw and sometimes harmonious, but always powerful, and the images are always on the side of the peaceful nature,” he said. “I don’t discuss in my paintings negative things, I don’t dwell on it in my mind and don’t dwell on it in my canvasses.”
In another interview, he summed it up like this: “I see everything through rainbow eyes.”
Although accounts of Max’s career sometimes lament that he was not taken seriously by the art establishment, in fact his work has been featured in dozens of museum exhibitions around the world. New York’s Museum of Modern Art owns seven of his works.
The art for the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” is sometimes mistakenly attributed to Max, but the design for the album cover and “Yellow Submarine” movie are officially credited to the late Heinz Edelmann. Max claimed in a 2012 interview he did the original “Yellow Submarine” design before handing it off to Edelmann. But the website for New York’s Park West gallery, a longtime dealer of Max’s art, described Max’s involvement in “Yellow Submarine” as “early consulting work.”
Max was, however, friends with the Beatles and many other celebrities. He also had a deep interest in Eastern spirituality. He brought “Swami” Satchidananda Saraswati to the U.S., and helped him popularize yoga here.
Max’s first marriage to Elizabeth Nance ended in divorce. In addition to his son, he is survived by a daughter, Libra Astro.