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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