Immigrant of the Day: Peter Max (Germany)

Peter Max (born October 19, 1937) is an American pop artist. Max was born as Peter Finkelstein in Berlin, Germany, and was raised in Shanghai, China, and in Israel before his family settled in the United States in 1953.  To the right is a picture of a Peter Max mural on the Atlantic City boardwalk.

The young artist trained in New York at the Art Students League, Pratt Institute, and the School of Visual Arts. After completing his studies, Peter Max opened a design studio and gained success as a designer for books, posters andproducts. Max closed his studio in 1964 and began making his signature colorful silkscreens. Max's work played significant role on making Indian mural paintings. Max's art work was a part of the psychedelic movement in graphic design. His work was influential and much imitated in advertising design in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Max later evolved from a pop artist of the 1960s to neo-expressionism. He works with multiple media, including oil, acrylics, water colors, fingerpaints, dyes, pastels, charcoal, pen, multi-colored pencils, etchings, engravings, animation cells, lithographs, serigraphs, silk screens, ceramics, sculpture, collage, video, xerox, fax, and computer graphics. He also includes mass media as a "canvas" for his creative expression.

Max often uses American symbols in his artwork and has done paintings and projects for Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush. Recently he created his 100 Clintons, a multiple portrait installation whose images were used through the four days of the Presidential inauguration. The Official Page - The Official Peter Max Web Site with listings of Galleries and Exhibitions and the complete Image Library of Peter Max, offer much more information about Max and his work.

KJ