Peter Max
STATUE OF LIBERTY
1989

About the Item

Original acrylic painting on canvas. Hand-signed in acrylic on front by Peter Max. Peter Canvas size 71.75 x 35.75 inches. Custom framed with hand painted filet. Frame size approx 86 x 50 inches. Max studio catalog number and year on verso. Artwork is in excellent condition. Gallery Art issued Certificate of Authenticity included. All reasonable offers will be considered. About the Artist: Peter Max (American, born 1937) is a German artist known for his unique brand of rainbow-hued prints and paintings, which he has created since the early 1960s. Employing painterly strokes, his illustrations incorporate a wide spectrum of colors and patterns as seen in his Umbrella Man series. “I'm just wowed by the universe. I'm just glad to do something I love to do. I love color, I love painting, I love shapes, I love composition, I love the people around me,” he once exclaimed. “I'm adoring it all.” Born Peter Max Finkelstein on October 19, 1937 in Berlin, Germany, his parents fled the Nazi regime in 1938, moving between China, Israel, and Paris before settling in Brooklyn, NY in 1953. He went on to study at the Art Students League of New York, later becoming involved with psychedelic movement in the 1960s, creating a number of posters for bands of the time. Though he is an outspoken political activist and environmentalist, Max has also produced designs for the ad campaigns of several high-profile brands, including 7-Up and Chrysler. The artist’s works are included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. He currently lives and works in New York, NY.

Creator:
Peter Max (1937, American, German)
Creation Year:
1989
Dimensions:
Height: 71.75 in (182.25 cm)Width: 35.75 in (90.81 cm)Depth: 1 in (2.54 cm)
Medium:
Acrylic,Canvas
Movement & Style:
Pop Art
Period:
1980-1989
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Aventura, FL
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU725311558992
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Peter Max

Born Peter Max Finkelstein in Berlin in 1937, psychedelic Pop art icon Peter Max spent the first part of his childhood in Shanghai after his parents emigrated from Germany to flee the Nazis. While there, Max developed his deep interest in American pop culture — namely comic books, jazz and cinema. Max’s paintings, graphic design, prints and illustrations, which were inspired by these interests, were also informed by his experience with synesthesia, a sensory condition that causes him to see music and hear color.

After relocating to Haifa, Israel, then Paris, where he spent a significant amount of time in sketching classes at the Louvre, a teenage Max and his family finally moved to the United States, settling in Brooklyn. Max enrolled in the Art Students League of New York in 1956, training under Frank J. Reilly, and then the School of Visual Arts. Throughout art school, Max focused on photorealism, but he found the style too restrictive. When he graduated and opened his graphic design studio with friends in 1962, he began experimenting with abstraction and color — just in time for the psychedelic era.

The technicolor works for which Max would become known are characterized by big and bold graphic qualities — not dissimilar to what you’d find in his beloved comic books. Some deeper themes emerged across his work too: Max spent a good portion of the 1960s and 1970s creating his signature cosmic style, inspired by his fascination with astronomy and Eastern philosophies.

For Max and his partners, the graphic design business was highly successful, with commissions rolling in from advertising agencies, magazines and even Hollywood in the form of movie posters. The artist was featured on the cover of Life in 1969, and by the 1970s, he was practically a household name.

Max's body of work extended into product design, including a line of clocks for General Electric, while his domination of the commercial art scene continued for decades. He was commissioned to paint a postage stamp honoring the World’s Fair of 1974 (Expo ‘74); a Statue of Liberty series in which some proceeds went on to fund the statue’s restoration; posters and other advertising materials for major events like the Super Bowl, the U.S. Open and the Grammys; a Dale Earnhardt race car; and even the hull of the Norwegian Breakaway cruise ship.

Commercial activities aside, Max has long been the subject of many museum exhibitions, from his first solo show in 1970, “The World of Peter Max,” at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco to 2016's “Peter Max: 50 Years of Cosmic Dreaming” at the Tampa Museum of Art in Florida. Today, his work belongs to the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and other institutions.

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