Peter Max Blushing Beauty Signed Mixed Media Original Painting over Lithograph

Artist: Peter Max
Title: Blushing Beauty
Medium: Mixed Media on Paper (original painting over lithograph)
Size: 27.75" x 22"
Year: 2002
Inscription: Signed "Max" on front
Documentation: Includes Gallery Certificate of Authenticity and appraisal from Park West Gallery
Peter Max Studio Registration number: Reg # 114568.0615

In "Blushing Beauty" (2002), Peter Max presents a stylized female visage rendered through his signature vocabulary of saturated color, fluid contour, and expressive mark-making. The composition centers on the face, which emerges from layered fields of pinks, reds, blues, and violets, with simplified features outlined in confident, gestural line. The figure's direct gaze and softly modeled forms evoke both portraiture and iconography, situating the image between representation and abstraction. As in much of Max's work, color functions as an emotive force rather than a descriptive one, imparting a sense of vitality and immediacy to the subject.

The work exemplifies Max's long-standing practice of combining printmaking with hand-applied paint. Executed as an original painting over a lithographic base, "Blushing Beauty" reveals the artist's interest in revisiting and transforming printed imagery through painterly intervention. Areas of opaque pigment and energetic brushwork animate the surface, emphasizing individuality and spontaneity while reinforcing Max's belief in art as a vehicle for optimism and visual intensity. The female figure, a recurring motif in his oeuvre, serves less as a specific sitter than as an archetypal presence shaped by color, line, and rhythm.

Created in 2002, "Blushing Beauty" is a mixed media work on paper measuring 27.75 × 22 inches. It is signed "Max" on the front and bears Peter Max Studio Registration No. 114568.0615. The work is accompanied by a gallery certificate of authenticity and an appraisal issued by Park West Gallery, with an appraised value of $10,500 as of 2021. These documents provide formal verification of the work's authorship, provenance, and market valuation.

About Peter Max

Peter Max (b. 1937) is a German-born American artist whose work has played a significant role in shaping the visual language of postwar American Pop and contemporary art. Widely recognized for his use of saturated color, graphic line, and cosmological imagery, Max occupies a distinctive position at the intersection of fine art, popular culture, and mass media from the 1960s onward.

Born in Berlin in 1937, Max spent his early childhood in Shanghai before relocating to Israel and later immigrating to the United States in the early 1950s. He studied at the Art Students League of New York, where his academic training in drawing and painting provided a foundation for the bold, graphic aesthetic that would later define his work. By the mid-1960s, Max emerged as a central figure in the American countercultural moment, producing posters, album covers, and commercial imagery that aligned with the era's interest in space exploration, expanded consciousness, and visual experimentation.

Max's art is characterized by luminous color fields, stylized figures, and recurring motifs such as celestial bodies, patriotic symbols, and iconic landmarks. While often associated with Pop Art, his work departs from the movement's ironic detachment, favoring instead a more expressive and idealistic visual language. Over time, his practice expanded beyond commercial graphics to include original paintings, mixed media works, and large-scale public commissions.

Throughout his career, Peter Max has completed official projects for six U.S. presidents and created works commemorating major cultural events, including the Statue of Liberty Centennial, the Olympic Games, and international sporting events. His portraits of American presidents, reinterpretations of the American flag, and depictions of New York City landmarks have become recurring themes in his later oeuvre.

Peter Max's work has been exhibited widely and is represented in numerous museum and institutional collections, including the Smithsonian Institution and the Museum of Modern Art Library. With a career spanning more than six decades, Max remains an influential figure in contemporary American art, known for integrating fine art practice with mass communication and for developing a visual language that has become emblematic of late twentieth-century American culture.