Peter Max, born Peter Max Finkelstein in Berlin in 1937, died at a Manhattan hospital at the age of 88, his friend and spokesperson revealed.

Published on: Sep 17, 2026, 09:00:05 IST

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Psychedelic pop artist Peter Max has died at the age of 88, friend and spokesperson Michael Pagnotta confirmed to Rolling Stone. Max died on Monday, September 14.

“He had a very expansive mind. As much as the Beatles provided a soundtrack for that era and for that generation, Peter visualized it, and he just exploded onto the scene in the late 1960s,” Pagnotta said. “Whatever kind of post-war optimism existed in the country, even though it was very turbulent times, Peter was able to capture that and marry it to that sort of spiritual eastern magical mystery thing, and it worked perfectly. And he believed in the mass appeal of what he was doing. He believed in making art accessible to people.”

Peter Max’s cause of death

While Max’s official cause of death has not been revealed, Pagnotta said that he died at a Manhattan hospital after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He added that Max is survived by his children, Adam and Libra, who “loved him very much.”

Pagnotta began working for Max in the mid-80s.

Max was born Peter Max Finkelstein in Berlin in 1937. When he was an infant, his family fled the Nazis and lived in Shanghai for about a decade, then Israel, until they finally settled in Brooklyn in 1953.

Max studied at the Art Students League of New York, the same school as Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly. He started an art studio in the ‘60s with his friend Tom Daly, specializing in covers for books and albums.

The German-American artist’s psychedelic posters and rainbow-hued portraits of everyone from Bob Dylan and Ringo Starr to Barack Obama and Taylor Swift made him an icon.

“To me, the universe is itself the ultimate expression of creativity,” Max wrote in his visual memoir. “That we, as human beings, have been endowed with the ability to channel that creativity fills me with a sense of awe and wonder. When I tap into my inner cosmos — that nucleus of creativity within me — it becomes a source of ever-expanding possibilities, enabling me to go from magical adventure to another.”

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