Peter Max
Peter Max · Arts & Literature
Born Peter Max Finkelstein in Berlin; Jewish refugee child of Shanghai and Haifa whose psychedelic colour became the visual signature of the 1960s; official artist of the Olympics, the Super Bowl and the World Cup, and painter of 36 Rabins
19 October 1937, Berlin, Germany — 14 September 2026, New York City, United States
Shanghai · Haifa · New York
Peter Max is recognized among Jewish contributors to Arts & Literature — Born Peter Max Finkelstein in Berlin; Jewish refugee child of Shanghai and Haifa whose psychedelic colour became the visual signature of the 1960s; official artist of the Olympics, the Super Bowl and the World Cup, and painter of 36 Rabins
Origins and early life
Peter Max was born Peter Max Finkelstein in Berlin in 1937 to a Jewish family; his Hebrew name, as he gave it himself, was Tuvia. His parents fled Nazi Germany with him months later and spent ten years in the Jewish refugee community of Shanghai.
Work and career
In 1948 they sailed for the newly founded State of Israel aboard a ship sent for the Jews of Shanghai, and settled in Haifa, where he learned Hebrew, talked his way into an evening astronomy class at the Technion at thirteen, and took painting lessons from an Austrian émigré, a Fauvist who exaggerated his colours. At sixteen the family moved on through Paris, where he took classes at the Louvre, to Brooklyn. He studied at the Art Students League, the School of Visual Arts and Pratt, opened a design studio in 1961, and by the late sixties his swirling cosmic colour was the visual signature of the decade: posters, the cover of Life in 1969, scores of product lines, even the Manhattan telephone directory.
He was official artist to the Olympics, the Super Bowl, the World Cup, the World Series and the Indianapolis 500; he painted a Boeing 777 and a cruise-ship hull; and he returned all his life to the Statue of Liberty, first for the Bicentennial, then at the White House at Nancy Reagan's invitation in 1981. Among his Jewish and Israeli works is 36 Rabins, a series of portraits of the assassinated prime minister. His Jewish heritage, he said in 2017, shaped him as an artist above all through the love and the care he received from the Jewish community.
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Source: NBC News / AP obituary; The Jerusalem Post / Reuters; Jewish Ledger interview, 2014
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Born Peter Max Finkelstein in Berlin; Jewish refugee child of Shanghai and Haifa whose psychedelic colour became the visual signature of the 1960s; official artist of the Olympics, the Super Bowl and the World Cup, and painter of 36 Rabins
Source: NBC News / AP obituary; The Jerusalem Post / Reuters; Jewish Ledger interview, 2014
