The pop art movement first rose in the countries of the United States and the United Kingdom sometime during the 1950s. This movement basically started off by providing a challenge to the various fine arts popular during that type, by trying to incorporate items and imaginary from various mass cultures into art. Peter Max is among the most prominent names beaconing to the pop art landscape of the US. While Max was born in Berlin, it was in America where he established his name and reputation as an incredible pop artist.
Inspired a lot by the embrace of bold and juxtaposing colors in the Fauvist movement, as well as in direct response to imagery derived from popular culture, the artwork of Peter Max went in to achieve a great mass appeal during the psychedelic art output of the 1960s and 70s, and his popularity continues even today. Nowadays people can find a number of Max’s paintings, posters, and prints at the auction houses. The price of his work tends to range from a few thousand dollars to even tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the demand of the art and the medium of the artwork.
Peter Max was born in the year of 1937, just before his whole family fled from Germany to China in order to escape the Nazi regime. They later went to Israel and lived there till the late 1940s. It was in Israel when little Peter slowly began to show interest in art and even took art lessons as a teen. According to his own admission, a lot of his colour usage in his works was inspired by Fauvre Art movement, which was introduced to him by his art teacher who encouraged him to search for colors in objects that seemed to be colourless with the help of the reflections of sunlight in daily objects.
Young Peter Max further got a chance to explore his passion and talent for art as his family left Israel for Brooklyn, New York. Here he went on to study studied realism, followed by abstraction, and got a knack of experimenting with bold colour combinations. It was sometime in the 1960s when Max first learned a very special method of printing that emphasized solid, bright and blended colours. He learned this method from a printer who had worked with the great Pablo Picasso.
Max’s professional journey as an artist started when he opened a small art studio in Manhattan that was called “The Daly & Max Studio”, along with his very dear friend. At this studio, he typically worked on multiple advertising projects and books that incorporated a range of antique photographic images as a unique collage. From there, his work started to gain a lot of popularity, and within years he became celebrated artists who produced portraits for major public figures. Over the decades he has captured the likeness of many American politicians, including Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
