Peter Max, the Artist Whose Neon Posters Covered Every Dorm Wall, Dies at 88

You might not know the name, but you know the colors. Peter Max, the pop artist whose swirling neon suns and melted peace signs became the visual shorthand for the 1960s, died Monday at 88. His son Adam announced the news Wednesday. Max had been living with advanced dementia.

His biography reads like a movie script. Born in Berlin in 1937 to a Jewish family, he fled Nazi Germany as a child and eventually settled in New York at 16. From there he built a design empire that stretched from dorm room posters to postage stamps to a Boeing 777 and a Norwegian Cruise Line ship. He served as the official artist for the Olympics, the Super Bowl, and the World Cup, and painted portraits of presidents alongside modern stars like Taylor Swift.

His later years were marked by legal and personal turmoil, including a 1997 tax fraud conviction and family disputes over his care. But the art outlived all of it. Take a look around your place. Is there a Peter Max piece you never noticed you had?