Timeline Peter Max

Peter Max 18

• 1938 The Finkelsteins flee Berlin for Shanghai His father's import business had the connections to get them out Max spent his first ten years in a pagoda-style house near a Buddhist monastery and a Sikh temple.
• 1948 The family moves to Haifa Ten years in China, then Israel He drew constantly, encouraged by a mother who had been a fashion designer.
• 1953 The family settles in Brooklyn Bensonhurst, by way of Paris He had lived on three continents before starting an American high school.
• 1956 Max enrols at the Art Students League Studying under the realist Frank J. Reilly A rigorous academic training that his later work gives no hint of.
• 1962 Max opens a Manhattan studio with Tom Daly The Daly and Max studio, later joined by Don Rubbo Collage-based advertising work that won industry awards before anyone had heard of him.
• 1967 Flyers for the Central Park Be-In Max becomes the visual language of the counterculture Astronomy fed what he called his Cosmic Sixties: star fields, sun rays and saturated colour.
• 1969 Life puts Max on the cover Portrait of the artist as a very rich man 72 corporations were licensing his images. The posters sold in the millions.
• 1970 The Peter Max boom Mugs, clocks, scarves, sheets, a Beatles-adjacent look on everything He was a vegetarian and a teetotaller who reached the psychedelic look through yoga, not drugs.
• 1974 A United States postage stamp for Expo '74 The environmental world's fair at Spokane The first of many government commissions for an artist who had been a counterculture figure.
• 1976 Psychedelic welcome signs for US border crossings Commissioned, then shelved Officials decided the artwork evoked drug culture and kept it in storage for years.
• 1976 The Statue of Liberty series begins Painted for the American Bicentennial He returned to the subject for the rest of his life, and campaigned for the statue's restoration.
• 1981 Max lobbies Lee Iacocca over the Statue of Liberty Joining the campaign that restored it for its centenary His paintings of the statue became the campaign's public face.
• 1994 Official artist of the World Cup The tournament held in the United States One of six Grammy commissions, two Super Bowls and a World Series would follow.
• 2000 The Subway Series Art for the Yankees against the Mets A New York artist for the most New York World Series in living memory.
• 2002 A car for Dale Earnhardt Max paints for NASCAR His reach ran from the Age of Aquarius to stock car racing without any apparent difficulty.
• 2012 The Paul McCartney portrait series Unveiled at his New York studio Album covers for Aretha Franklin and Yes had come decades earlier.
• 2019 A guardianship dispute becomes public His daughter Libra Max challenges the court-appointed guardian Max had been out of public view for years with advancing dementia.
• 2026 Peter Max dies Aged 88, in a Manhattan hospital Fourteen years of dementia. His son Adam confirmed the death two days later.