The problem facing Peter Max in the early 1970s was not obscurity. It was the opposite. His images had become so widely reproduced that they were increasingly difficult to separate from the products carrying them. Posters, magazines, household goods, advertising, and commercial design had made his visual language instantly recognizable. For an artist who had begun with disciplined study and a desire to explore, that success created an artistic question that could not be answered simply by making more of the same. ([The Washington Post][3])
Max eventually withdrew from public view. In 1971, according to his studio biography, he took a creative retreat to explore a different direction in painting. The change was visible in his technique. During the psychedelic period he had relied heavily on line, graphic reproduction, and color added through printing or silkscreen. Now he began using acrylic paint and large brushes, including house-painting brushes, allowing broader and more spontaneous marks to occupy the canvas. ([Peter Max Studio][1])
The shift was more than a change in materials. Max was moving away from the highly reproducible image and back toward the singular physical act of painting. A poster could be printed thousands of times. A painting made with a large brush could retain the evidence of the artist's movement—the pressure, direction, overlap, and irregularity of the stroke.
His retreat did not mean that he had abandoned the public world. Instead, he began approaching public themes through a more painterly vocabulary. His art continued to use bright colors and recognizable symbols, but the surfaces became freer. He was not simply repeating the visual formula that had made him famous.
In 1974, that combination of recognizable imagery and public purpose led to an important commission from the U.S. Postal Service. Max created a ten-cent stamp for Expo '74 in Spokane, associated with environmental awareness and carrying the message “Preserve the Environment.” It became the first U.S. environmental postage stamp. ([Peter Max Studio][1])
The commission revealed something significant about Max's place in American culture. His work could move between galleries and objects used every day. The same artist whose imagery had appeared on posters could also place an environmental message on something that traveled through the mail.
Two years later, another commission connected his work with immigration and American identity. In 1976, the U.S. General Services Administration asked Max to create “Welcome to America” murals for border entry points between the United States and Canada and Mexico. The colorful bilingual murals were intended to greet people entering the country. ([Peter Max Studio][1])
For Max, the assignment had particular resonance. His own childhood had been shaped by migration. He had been born in Berlin, escaped Nazi Germany with his parents, grown up in Shanghai and Israel, traveled through Europe, and eventually arrived in New York as a teenager. The idea of welcoming newcomers was therefore connected to the geography of his own life.
The same year brought another defining subject. Max created the book Peter Max Paints America for the United States Bicentennial. After attending a White House celebration connected to the publication, he returned to New York with a new artistic focus: the Statue of Liberty. He began what became an ongoing tradition of painting Liberty around July Fourth. ([Peter Max Studio][1])
The Statue of Liberty became one of the enduring symbols of his career. Max's versions did not attempt to replace the monument itself. Instead, he treated Liberty as a recurring visual subject through which he could explore immigration, freedom, color, American identity, and celebration.
In 1981, President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan invited Max to the White House for the president's first Fourth of July celebration. Max painted six eight-foot-tall Statue of Liberty paintings in the Rose Garden. After finishing the sixth, he invited Reagan to make the final brushstroke. ([Peter Max Studio][1])
The episode illustrated the unusual range of Max's career. His work could be intimate enough for a private collector, commercial enough for a household product, popular enough for television, and public enough to appear at the White House.
Yet Max's relationship with public life remained complicated. He had spent years surrounded by attention, products, commissions, and cultural expectations. His decision to retreat and paint privately demonstrated that recognition was not the same thing as artistic satisfaction.
In 1985, another public event affected him. Max was backstage at the Live Aid concert in Philadelphia, where musicians had gathered for a major charitable performance. Moved by what he saw, he created an image of an angel embracing the planet and called it “I Love the World.” ([Peter Max Studio][1])
The following year, Max became involved in an even larger public campaign. The Statue of Liberty required restoration, and Max helped spearhead a campaign supporting the project. He brought Lee Iacocca into the effort as chairman of the Liberty Renovation project and participated in fundraising. The campaign culminated in the restoration's public celebration in 1986. ([Peter Max Studio][1])
Max's role in the restoration campaign was not simply that of a painter supplying an illustration. His existing relationship with Liberty allowed him to function as an advocate, fundraiser, and public artist. The symbol he had painted repeatedly became part of a real-world preservation effort.
In 1987, People magazine turned to Max for a commemorative cover marking the twentieth anniversary of the Summer of Love. He created a cosmic collage incorporating figures associated with the 1960s, including the Beatles, Jerry Garcia, Allen Ginsberg, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Timothy Leary. ([Peter Max Studio][1])
The assignment brought him back to the decade that had made him famous. But Max was no longer the young artist discovering his place within that culture. He had become one of the people whose images helped define how that era was remembered.
In 1988, after years of working in relative seclusion, Max opened a large studio and atelier near Lincoln Center in Manhattan. The space reportedly measured about 40,000 square feet. The size of the studio reflected the scale of his production and the enormous archive of images accumulated over decades. ([Peter Max Studio][1])
Then history supplied another powerful object for his imagination. In 1990, Max received a large section of the fallen Berlin Wall. He used a hammer and chisel to carve the shape of a peace dove from the concrete, painted it, and placed the dove on top. ([Peter Max Studio][1])
The symbolism was difficult to miss. The wall had divided a city and represented the political division of Europe. Max had been born in Berlin in 1937, when Germany was moving toward catastrophe. More than fifty years later, a piece of the wall that had divided Berlin sat before him as material for an artwork about freedom and peace.
His career was now moving through a different kind of history. He had begun as a refugee child, trained as a realist, become a commercial designer, turned into a psychedelic pop-art figure, withdrawn to rethink his painting, and returned to the public sphere through environmental, patriotic, humanitarian, and historical imagery.
But his international reach was about to expand again.
Click Here to continue read next: PART3: From a Fallen Wall to Presidents and World Events, Peter Max Became More Than a Painter as His Images Entered the Record of Modern America
Before the Colors Became Famous, a Child Escaped a Dangerous Europe and Carried a Memory of the World Into His Art
Part 2 of 16
