Peter Max, Psychedelic Pop Artist of the 1960s, Dies at 88

Peter Max, the pop artist whose psychedelic 'flower power' imagery graced everything from posters to a cruise ship, has died at 88, his family says.

Peter Max, the pop artist and hippie icon who helped define the vibrant psychedelic style of the 1960s, has died at 88. Max died Monday at a Manhattan hospital, according to a statement provided to the New York Times by his son Adam Max, as the Los Angeles Times reports via the Union Leader. No cause of death was given, but Max had been suffering from advanced dementia, per the Associated Press. "We will remember his extraordinary creativity, his warmth, his curiosity, and the way he saw beauty and possibility everywhere," Adam Max said in a statement to the AP, which the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette quotes. "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."

Born Peter Max Finkelstein on Oct. 19, 1937 in Berlin, Max came to art by a remarkable route. His Jewish family fled Nazi Germany for Shanghai when he was an infant, and he was raised across China, Israel and Paris before settling in New York City at 16, the Los Angeles Times reports via unionleader.com. American culture reached him early: he told the Daily Pilot, as the Times recount, that as a boy in China he persuaded his father to buy four large bags of American comic books featuring Captain Marvel, Superman and Batman, while listening to bebop and jazz on the radio. "When I was 16, I knew more about American iconography than most people do today," Max told the outlet. He studied at the Art Students League, the School of Visual Arts and Pratt Institute, the AP reports, and in 1961 opened a graphic design studio with friends.

Max's swirly, colorful, instantly recognizable designs epitomized the era's 'flower power' art, the Associated Press tells readers through the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. His murallike tableaus of flowers, the cosmos and cartoonish figures — in turquoise, orange and neon green — seemed to be everywhere in the late 1960s and early 1970s: dorm room walls were plastered with his posters, and household clocks and bedspreads carried his designs. AFP, reporting via The Sun Malaysia, says the brightly colored works were credited with capturing the essence of the 1960s 'summer of love' and psychedelia. "I see everything through rainbow eyes," Max once told ABC, as AFP quotes. He told an interviewer the images were "always on the side of the peaceful nature."

What set Max apart was sheer commercial reach. The AP reports he was official artist for the Olympics, the Super Bowl, the Indianapolis 500, the World Cup, the World Series and many other events, with his art appearing on a Boeing 777 and a Norwegian Cruise Line ship, and portrait subjects ranging from U.S. presidents to Taylor Swift. AFP notes his work was licensed for everything from shower curtains to a General Electric 'art clock' line, plus an MTV logo and a postage stamp. In 2000, the Washington Post reported he was the single biggest seller on eBay behind Beanie Babies, according to the Los Angeles Times. "My work was really, I would say, almost exploited... 70 product lines," Max told the AP — a success that, he said, meant he "wasn't painting anymore," prompting him to shut the business briefly in the early 1970s.

The artist's mass appeal divided the art establishment. "His art is accessible and can be understood without a PhD in art history, and that is a good thing," Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, author of 'The Warhol Economy,' told the AP in 2015, as the Los Angeles Times quotes via unionleader.com. Yet his work has appeared in dozens of museum exhibitions worldwide, and New York's Museum of Modern Art owns seven of his works, the AP notes. In later years, the AP says, family legal battles over his treatment and art ownership became tabloid fodder, and his second wife Mary Max died by suicide in 2019.

Max is survived by his son Adam and daughter Libra Astro, the Los Angeles Times reports via unionleader.com, and the AP adds he is also survived by his second wife Mary Max. His death closes a career in which, as AFP quotes him telling the Times in 2019, he was "wowed by the universe" and said "my legacy is in the hands of other people." One correction his death has already sharpened: the art for the Beatles' 'Yellow Submarine' film and album has often been mistakenly attributed to Max — partly because he took credit for it, per the New York Times as the Los Angeles Times relay — with the late German illustrator Heinz Edelmann officially credited for the art direction and character design.