Peter Max, known for groovy art that came to symbolize the 60s, dies at 88

Pop artist Peter Max, whose dreamy, boldly colored works provided an artistic backdrop for the 1960s US hippie movement and made him a commercial art powerhouse, died on Monday at the age of 88 following a long illness, a spokesperson for his family says.

Max’s visions – often influenced by his love of astronomy – were everywhere in the ’60s and ’70s and almost as much a part of the decade’s youth culture as sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. They were like artistic renderings of an acid trip and were, in the vernacular of the time, really groovy.

The colors were vibrant and the images surreal — cosmic landscapes and starbursts, doves and floating peace symbols, kaleidoscopic butterflies, puffy clouds and other flower-power imagery. Rock stars such as the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and Mick Jagger were Max’s portrait subjects, as well as his friends.

Born Peter Max Finkelstein to German Jewish parents in Berlin on October 19, 1937, the family fled and lived in China, moved in 1948 to Haifa, Israel, where they lived for several years, and then had a brief stop in Paris before settling in New York City in 1953.

In art school, he studied realism, which did not come through in his work, and started an award-winning design studio with a partner before setting out on his own to help shape the 1960s.

Max died in a hospital in Manhattan and is survived by his daughter Libra and son Adam.

“My father was my best friend,” his daughter says in a statement. “I feel incredibly blessed to have been so deeply loved and to be his daughter.

“I hope that alongside his remarkable artistic legacy, people will remember his kindness, his gentleness, and how much he genuinely cherished putting joy into the world,” she says.