From ‘Yellow Submarine’ to the sides of buses, Peter Max’s designs defined the culture of the sixties.

Peter Max is a multi-dimensional creative artist. He has worked with oils, acrylics, water colors, finger paints, dyes, pastels, charcoal, pen, multi-colored pencils, etchings, engravings, animation cells, lithographs, serigraphs, silk screens, ceramics, and computer graphics. He loves all media, including mass media as a “canvas” for his creative expression.

As in his prolific creative output, Max is as passionate in his creative input. He loves to hear amazing facts about the universe and is as fascinated with numbers and mathematics as he is with visual phenomena.

“If I didn’t choose art, I would have become an astronomer,” states Max, who became fascinated with astronomy while living in Israel, following a ten-year upbringing in Shanghai, China. “I became fascinated with the vast distances in space as well as the vast world within the atom,” says Max.

European born, Peter was raised in Shanghai, China, where he spent his first ten years. He lived in a pagoda-style house situated amidst a Buddhist monastery, a Sikh temple and a Viennese cafe. And yet, with all that richness and diversity of culture, he still had a dream of an adventure yet to come in a far-off land called America.

In 1953, Peter’s family emigrated to America after a six-month visit to Paris. Though it was a relatively short stay, Peter enrolled in an art school and absorbed the culture and art heritage of Paris. At the age of sixteen, Peter realized his childhood vision and arrived in America.

After completing high school, he continued his art studies at The Art Student’s League, a renowned, traditional academy across from Carnegie Hall in Manhattan.Here, Peter learned the rigid disciplines of realism and developed into a realist painter.

Max also admired the work of contemporary photographers such as Bert Stern, Richard Avedon, and Irving Penn, which led to his photo collage period, in which he had captured the psychedelic era of the mid ’60s.

This new style developed as a spontaneous creative urge, following Max’s meeting with Swami Satchidananda, an Indian Yoga master who taught him meditation and the spiritual teachings of the East. Max’s Cosmic ’60s art, with its transcendental imagery captured the imagination of the entire generation and catapulted the young artist to fame and fortune.
Max was suddenly on numerous magazine covers, including Life Magazine, and appeared on national TV. Max’s visual impact on the ’60s has often been compared to the influence the Beatles had with their music.

For July 4, 1976, Max created a special installation and art book, Peter Max Paints America, to commemorate America’s bicentennial. It was the year Max also began his annual July 4th tradition of painting the Statue of Liberty. In 1982, Max painted six Liberties on the White House lawn, and then personally helped to actualize the statue’s restoration, which was completed in 1986.

In 1989, for the 20th anniversary of Woodstock, Max was asked to create world’s largest rock-and-roll stage for the Moscow Music Peace Festival. Soon after the festival, in October, 1989, Max unveiled his “40 Gorbys,” a colorful homage to Mikhail Gorbachev.

 Always an optimist, Max sees a fabulous new age for the new millennium, filled with enormous possibilities. He also sees a need for a greater responsibility to our planet, and he is ever ready to serve as the “Global Artist.”

This post was written with the help of Wikipedia.

LOVE, 1968

Man Must Moon

Earth Day

Thought, 1970

Mind Blowing

Liberty Head

America 2000

  Tags: artsunday

editdeletereply lauritasita wrote on Jul 5, ’08 A very interesting artist from the 60s and the 20th century.

deletereply starfishred wrote on Jul 6, ’08 I love his colors and fun style great artist whom we tend to forget

deletereply belita747 wrote on Jul 6, ’08 Thanks for sharing on here such colourful and creative artworks. I like all of them but those on Earth Day and Mind Blowing are terrific. Have a great sunday. http://belita747.multiply.com/journal/item/464/CreARTive_SUNDAY_SMALL-SIZED_HANDICRAFTS

deletereply nemo4sun wrote on Jul 6, ’08 he gave style to my childhood 🙂

deletereply jayaramanms wrote on Jul 6, ’08 Beautiful and blog, with awesome and colorful Pictures. Thanks for sharing. Please see mine at – http://jayaramanms.multiply.com/journal/item/220/ART_SUNDAY-_CHOLA_PERIOD._

editdeletereply lauritasita wrote on Jul 6, ’08 Peter Max was a great influence on the 60s culture.

deletereply greenwytch wrote on Jul 6, ’08 WOW, what a beautiful art sunday presentation! i hadn’t seen his work in a while, this is like eye and mind candy. thanks, laurita. ; D

deletereply mfhy2k wrote on Jul 6, ’08 I like Liberty Head, that is very cool.

deletereply aimlessjoys wrote on Jul 6, ’08 So bright & inspired with Hope. Lovely work!

editdeletereply lauritasita wrote on Jul 6, ’08 The face of Liberty Head looks like Elvis Presley’s, LOL!!!

deletereply wickedlyinnocent wrote on Jul 6, ’08 I like the work for Earth Day very much, and his style too, he really is a global artist. Thanks for the great presentation, Laurita.

deletereply forgetmenot525 wrote on Jul 7, ’08 Great blog, really interesting, I like the way these images are flat two dimensional decorative images, he seems to have taken from the arts and craft styles from early 20C and sort of evolved it into a new art form. My favourite of these has to be Earth Day

editdeletereply lauritasita wrote on Jul 7, ’08 Thank you for your comment, forgetmenot. Yes, Earth Day seems to be a favorite one. Although, all his works are so colorful and cheerful and full of hope !