Peter Max might not have been a household name at the end of his life, but his visual style — and utterly prolific artistic output over his roughly six-decade career — undoubtedly left a deep imprint on our country's collective artistic culture.
Max was born in Berlin, Germany in 1937 but spent the first decade or so of his life living in China before his family moved to New York City. He studied art at the Art Students League of New York for seven years, under Frank J. Reilly, who had himself studied alongside Norman Rockwell. Max left art school with his realism chops firmly in hand only to find a commercial art world being overtaken by photography so struggled to find work.
Then, one day an art director at an advertising agency saw some of his 'cosmic doodles' and offered him a job, and that turned into many jobs, and suddenly he found himself on the Johnny Carson Show, then the Ed Sullivan Show, and then on the cover of Life Magazine. Peter Max had become the creator of the visual style that came to define the 1960s counterculture and hippie movement, and much more.
He continued making art and evolved through numerous styles, but always keeping his distinctive approach so no matter which era of his career, his work was always instantly recognizable. When we talked with him on this show in 2009, in advance of a visit to a Naples gallery for an exhibition, Peter Max was working out of a 30,000-square-foot studio in Manhattan with a staff of 105 people. He had created a visual art empire.
Max passed away on Sept. 14 at the age of 88. We revisit our conversation with him originally recorded in February of 2009.
You can listen to our full conversation with Peter Max from 2009 below.
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