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In the 1970s, Max gave up his
commercial success and went into retreat to begin
painting in earnest. He submersed himself in his art for
several years, and was only induced to come out of
retreat on occasion through special commissions by the
Federal government agencies; for U.S. Border murals, the
first 10¢ U.S. postage stamp, and projects for the
Federal Energy Commission.
For July 4th, 1976, Max created a
special installation and art book, Peter Max Paints
America, to commemorate America's bicentennial. It was
the year Max also began his annual July 4th tradition of
painting the Statue of Liberty. In 1982, Max painted six
Liberties on the White House lawn, and then
personally helped to actualize the monument's
restoration, which was completed in 1986.
In the years that followed, Max
developed his new atelier, with a primary focus on
paintings, mixed media works and limited graphic
editions. Of the thousands of requests that came in for
posters, Max
was drawn to those that synchronized with his own
concerns; environmental, and human and animal rights.
He began a series of works called the
Better World series, and created a painting called "I
love the World", depicting an angel embracing the
planet, inspired by his backstage experience at the Live
Aid concert.
In 1989, for the 20th anniversary of
Woodstock, Max was asked to create world's largest rock
and roll stage for the Moscow Music Peace Festival.
Soon after the festival, in October, 1989, Max unveiled
his "40 Gorbys", a colorful homage to Mikhail Gorbachev.
As if it had prophetic overtones, a few weeks later,
Communism fell in Eastern Europe and Max was selected to
receive a 7000 pound section of the Berlin Wall, which
was installed on the battleship Intrepid museum. Using a
hammer and chisel, Max carved a dove from within the
stone and placed it on top of the wall to set it free.
In 1991, Max's one-man retrospective
at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersberg, drew the
largest turnout for any artist in Russian history, over
14,500 people attended!
In 1991, Max paid homage to another
great world figure, His Holiness The Dalai Lama, with an
installation of 108 portraits of the Tibetan leader. The
following year, in 1992, Max created two 150 ft. murals
for the U.S. Pavilion at the World's Fair in Seville,
Spain.
As a painter for four previous U.S.
Presidents, Carter, Ford, Bush and Reagan, in 1993, Max
was approached by the inaugural committee to create
posters for Bill Clinton's inauguration. He was later
invited to the White House to paint the signing of the
Peace Accord.
Max is always ready to apply his
creative talent to important global events and has
produced posters for the Summit of the Americas,
Gorbachev's State of the World Forum, and the United
Nations Earth Summit, for which he had designed a series
of twelve stamps that became the best-selling stamps in
U.N. history. For the U.N.s 50th anniversary, Max
produced an installation of fifty paintings in different
color combinations of the famous United Nations
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