Psychedelic-Poster Pioneer Peter Max Dies at 88

Psychedelic Pop artist Peter Max has died at the age of 88. Friend and spokesperson Michael Pagnotta confirmed the news, telling Rolling Stone Max had died on Monday; he was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. “He had a very expansive mind. As much as the Beatles provided a soundtrack for that era and for that generation, Peter visualized it, and he just exploded onto the scene in the late 1960s,” Pagnotta said. “Whatever kind of postwar optimism existed in the country, even though it was very turbulent times, Peter was able to capture that and marry it to that sort of spiritual eastern magical mystery thing, and it worked perfectly. And he believed in the mass appeal of what he was doing. He believed in making art accessible to people.”

Max was born Peter Max Finkelstein in Berlin in 1937. His family fled the Nazis when he was an infant. They lived in Shanghai for about a decade, then Israel, until finally settling in Brooklyn in 1953. Max studied at the Art Students League of New York, the same school as Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly. In the ’60s, Max started an art studio with his friend Tom Daly, specializing in covers for books and albums. 

In 1966, he learned yoga from Swami Satchidananda, eventually helping the yogi move to New York and open the Integral Yoga Institute. “The swami and yoga taught me a whole new way to draw,” Max said. “It empowered me to feel the cosmic consciousness within, and to allow that to flow out of me into my art.” 

Max took inspiration from astronomy. According to his official website, his love affair with the stars began in 1951. In the late ’60s, Max began combining his love of astronomy with his newly expanded consciousness and made starry, psychedelic Pop Art. His first big break was the poster for New York City’s second “be-in,” held in Central Park. His “Cosmic ’60s” poster collection became a dorm-room staple.

Max was known for his portraits of figures in rock music and politics — everyone from the Beatles to Barack Obama to Taylor Swift. For a countercultural artist, Max had such square patrons as General Electric, Ed Sullivan, and the U.S. government, which commissioned a series of “Welcome to the U.S.” signs for the Canadian and Mexican borders as well as a series of postage stamps for Expo ’74. 

“To me, the universe is itself the ultimate expression of creativity,” Max wrote in his visual memoir. “That we, as human beings, have been endowed with the ability to channel that creativity fills me with a sense of awe and wonder. When I tap into my inner cosmos — that nucleus of creativity within me — it becomes a source of ever-expanding possibilities, enabling me to go from magical adventure to another.”