The Late Great Peter Max

Psychedelic artist Peter Max died at the age of 88 on September 14, 2026, at the age of 88. In 2021, he had been diagnosed with advanced dementia.

Peter Max was born Peter Max Finkelstein on October 19, 1937, in Berlin. His family fled Nazi Germany for Shanghai when he was still a baby. They lived there for ten years. They spent some time in Tibet before migrating to Haifa, Israel, where they lived for many years. They spent a few months in Paris before settling in New York City. Peter Max was 16 at the time. He attended Lafayette High School in Brooklyn where among his classmates were actor Paul Sorvino and baseball legend Sandy Koufax. He studied art at at the Art Students League, the School of Visual Arts, and Pratt Institute. 

It was in 1962 that Peter Max opened an art studio in New York City called "The Daly & Max Studio" with Tom Daly. It was not long before Peter Max saw a good deal of success. He designed the flyers for the second "Be In," a political gathering in Central Park in New York City held On March 26, 1967. There were mass marketed posters featuring his psychedelic designs. He worked on campaigns for the American Cancer Society, General Electric, and Gibley Gin, as well as a campaign for pre-recorded cassette tapes. He designed the poster for the movie Paint the Wagon (1969) and covers for the Manhattan Yellow Pages.

In the early Seventies, Peter Max closed his studio for a time so he could get back to painting. After his return to public life, He did the art for a United States postal stamp commemorating Expo '74 in Spokane, Washington. He painted a series of portraits of the Statue of Liberty. He also designed bilingual welcome signs to be put up at the borders of the United States. 

Peter Max provided artwork for several events, including Earth Day, the FIFA World Cup, the Grammy Awards, several Super Bowls, the U.S. Open, and the Winter Olympics. He painted portraits of six different presidents. Despite claims that Peter Max's work was not taken seriously, it had been displayed at such museums as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Denver Art Museum, the Modern Art Museum in Munich, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, among others.

Given how ubiquitous his artwork was in my early childhood, Peter Max was probably the first artist outside of comic books of whom I was aware. He was definitely my favourite artist when I was growing up. His artwork was certainly colourful, and I swear there are some of his paintings where he uses every single colour visible to the human eye. His artwork also often utilized various American icons, from the Statue of Liberty to George Washington to various presidents. 

Peter Max is perhaps the artist most associated with the late Sixties and the early Seventies, and it is difficult picturing the era without his artwork. He certainly had a strong influence on the era. The popularity of Peter Max's artwork was such that it saw a rise in popularity of similar artists and psychedelic artwork in general. Peter Max was not responsible for the art of the movie Yellow Submarine (1968). That was Heinz Edelmann, who pioneered psychedelic artwork. That having been said, if not for the popularity of Peter Max's work, it seems likely that Yellow Submarine (1968) may have looked entirely different. Peter Max was also not responsible for 7Up's famous psychedelic 7Up ad campaign. Other artists were responsible for that art in that campaign, including Pat Dypold and psychedelic art pioneers John Alcorn and Milton Glaser. Again, it seems likely that the 7Up Uncola campaign may not have taken shape as it did if not for the popularity of Peter Max's artwork. While several artists worked in psychedelic art, Peter Max was the best known and the most popular.