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, sculpture, collage, video 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.
Peter's early childhood impressions had a profound influence on his
psyche, weaving the fabric that was to become the tapestry of his full
creative expression.
It was a childhood filled with magic and adventure, an odyssey the
likes of which few people have had, artists included.
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. From American
comic books, radio broadcasts and cinema shows, young Peter formed an
impression of the land of Captain Marvel, Flash Gordon, swing jazz,
swashbucklers, freedom and creativity.
But the American adventure was far in the future. In the decade to
follow, Peter would discover many other fascinating worlds that fanned
the fires of his imagination.
At the age of ten,
Peter and his parents traveled across the vast expanse of China to a
Tibetan mountain camp at the foothills of the Himalayas. Then they
journeyed 9,000 feet up to a beautiful, white-turreted hotel in a
mountain paradise that seemed like Shangri-La.
After their return to Shanghai, the family left on another voyage of
discovery, around India, the continent of Africa, and Israel, where
Peter studied art with a Viennese fauve painter. It was in Israel that
young Peter also developed a love and fascination for astronomy.
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. fter 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. When he left art school, Max had become fascinated
with new trends in commercial illustration and graphic arts, from
America as well as Europe and Japan. He decided to try his hand at it
and within a short time, he won awards for album covers and book
jackets, which combined his own brand of realism with graphic art
techniques.
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. As
the '60s progressed, the photo collages gave way, to his famous "Cosmic
'60s" style, with its distinctive line work and bold color combinations.
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. In the
1970s, Max gave up his commercial pursuits and went into retreat to
begin painting in earnest. He submersed himself in his art for several
years, and was only induced to come out of retreat on occasion through
special commissions by the Federal government agencies: the U.S. Border
murals, the first 10¢ U.S. postage stamp, and projects for the Federal
Energy Commission.
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 the years that followed, Max developed his new atelier, with a
primary focus on paintings, mixed media works and limited graphic
editions. Of the thousands of requests that came in for posters, Max was
drawn to those that synchronized with his own concerns: environmental,
human, and animal rights. He began a series of works called the Better
World series, and created a painting called "I love the World,"
depicting an angel embracing the planet, inspired by his backstage
experience at the Live Aid concert. 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.Prophetically, a few weeks later, communism fell in
Eastern Europe and Max was selected to receive a 7,000-pound section of
the Berlin Wall, which was installed on the Aircraft Carrier U.S.S.
Intrepid Museum. Using a hammer and chisel, Max carved a dove from
within the stone and placed it on top of the wall to set it free. In
1991, Max's one-man retrospective show at the Hermitage Museum in St.
Petersberg drew the largest turnout for any artist in Russian history.
As a painter for four former U.S. Presidents (Carter, Ford, Bush
and Reagan) in 1993, Max was approached by the inaugural committee to
create posters for Bill Clinton's inauguration. He was later invited to
the White House to paint the
signing of the Peace Accord.
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