Peter is best know for his illustrations in How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manuel for the Compleat Idiot. But he did all kinds of other amazing art as well, and showed a wonderful sense of humor in his art.

You can find some of Peter's illustration art now, here in Santa Fe in an exhibit, The Art of Peter Aschwanden: For the Compleat Idiot. This exhibit will be up until the end of April at the History Museum/Palace of the Governors on the Santa Fe Plaza. The exhibit celebrates Peter's wonderful fine-art book of pen and ink illustrations, also titled The Art of Peter Aschwanden: for the Compleat Idiot. The book covers illustrations in three car repair books and has a chapter on a variety of other graphic design work as well. Thoughts and stories from Peter's friends and family, and from Peter himself, are often hand lettered by Peter or printed in a font created from that lettering.

This book is availble in the History Museum gift shop. It was printed by James Bourland at the Palace Press.

The exhibit online notes say,

This quirky exhibit celebrates the man who brought humor and humanity to car repair manuals - Peter Aschwanden! The exhibit features large-scale detailed drawings drawn from the iconic illustrations in John Muir's best-seller, "How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive."

Included in the exhibit are ... spreads from a ... limited edition book dedicated to Aschwanden and produced by The New Mexico History Museum's Palace Press.

Also printed by James Bourland and available thr.ough this website, are letterpress fine art prints of The Exploded Sandwich and Billy the Kid. Contact us to ask about prices, sizes and shipping. The Exploded Sandwich is also available as a hand-colored print.

 

 

 

You can find some of the same images that are in the exhibit here on this website. Some of the "large-scale detailed drawings" at the exhibition are the same as the four large black and white posters—the "original" posters—where Peter supervised the printing himself. These include, The Exploded Beetle, The Exploded Rabbit, The Cutaway City and The German City.

We produce all the black and white originals as 12" x 18" black & white reprints with the addition of The Dream, Tularemia, The Engine, The Cutaway VW Engine, Bus & Friends and the Lobster Engine Rebuild. Peter's large (24" x 36") Map of Old Santa Fe poster is a gorgeous full color three-D view of Santa Fe surrounded by humorous pictures of Santa Fe life. Peter is in one of them. Printed from an original painting.

And take a look at Peter's large, full-color poster of The Birth of Billy the Kid. This reproduction of another of Peter's paintings is based on Botticelli's famous painting Venus and includes various actors in the Lincoln County War–a bit of New Mexico history–instead of the original angels. (Billy was the subject of a whole series of Peter's paintings.) The poster comes with a handy guide to all the characters.

Peter produced three 9" x 18" full-color posters that are part of The Route 66 Series. These posters highlight three areas in New Mexico along Route 66: Bernalillo, Los Lunas and Moriarty and are available as reprints or originals.

Finally, we have only a very few original posters left that are signed by Peter himself. We sell these for the poster price plus $100. Send us an email if you are interested in finding out more about these. They are in varying conditions and we can send you pictures of them.

 

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TOUR PETER'S STUDIOS
After Peter passed away we had a video made of both his upstairs and his downstairs studios in Santa Fe. Mundo Bravo did a wonderful job with the studio tours and has reissued this now on Vimeo. He said of it,

Think this one should be dusted off... a little offering I shot 15 years ago of Peter Aschwanden's studio at the time of his death. Peter was the illustrator for John Muir Publications here in Santa Fe. His artwork for them helped make some of their books like "How to keep Your Volkswagen Alive" and "The People's Guide to Mexico" into counter culture classics.*

When Peter died in 2005, Deborah Reade saw his studio and realized that it needed to be preserved, at least visually, and I was lucky enough to get that task. What you see here is the working studio of one of the great countercultural artists just as he left it on the day of his death.

This is an opportunity to see  a lot of Peter's art—not only his illustration art but his sculptures and paintings as well. Peter could turn anything into art. He built beautiful furniture and even theater props. You can see just a little of the two drawing tables he built in the downstairs tour, and the large head is also a prop—the Wizard of Oz—with eyes that go side-to-side and a mouth that opens and closes.

(*Note that almost all of the illustrations in The People's Guide to Mexico were done by Glen Strock)

 

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STORIES & INTERVIEWS
Some time ago we did a series of eight interviews with Peter's friends and family. These cover a wide range of topics including Peter's early life, who he was as an artist, life at John Muir Publications in Santa Fe and much more. Lots of pictures. Combine these interviews with Peter's studio tour (at the end of this page) to get the full picture!

Interview 1 with Hildegard Nelson, Peter's mother. Peter was always an artist and even as a small child would draw on anything–the street, the walls–as well as on paper. Pictures of his early art showing how his cartoons developed.

Interview 2 with Glenn Strock, author of The People's Guide to Mexico and a good friend who worked together with Peter on several projects.

Interview 3 with Ada Browne, another good friend who worked at John Muir Publications. JMP published and distributed How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive, The People's Guide to Mexico and a lot of other wonderful books.

Interview 4 with Barbara Luboff who typed the original How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive manuscript and was there from the beginning.

Interview 5with Eve Muir, wife of John Muir who, with him, owned John Muir Publications in Santa Fe. And of course, there from the beginning!

Interview 6 with Gilberto Guzman, a good friend of Peter's and a fellow artist who would talk with Peter for hours about art and life. An international muralist with many beautiful murals in Santa Fe. This includes one on Guadalupe Street that many people are still trying to save from destruction by developers. Peter helped some with this mural in its earliest stage. Includes pictures of Gilberto working on the mural.

Interview 7 with Calvin Hildebrand, another good friend of Peter's who would also sit with Peter, drinking coffee and discussing all manner of things.

Story 8 about JMP in the 70s and 80s. Peter illustrated How to Keep your Volkswagen Rabbit Alive, How to Keep Your Honda Alive, and How to Keep Your Datsun/Nissan Alive during this time. He also redrew most of the illustrations for the original VW Book through these years and created new illustrations for updated versions. He even contributed to some of the writing updates while illustrating a host of other books and projects.

T-SHIRTS & BEETLENESS!
Although we only take large or wholesale orders for T-shirts through this site, you can continue to find Peter's designs on individual T-shirts through www.beetleness.com out of the UK. They are fully authorized by Flathead Graphix and we work closely with them to make sure you'll always receive the same great quality that you have in the past. Shipping out of the UK is much more reasonable than US shipping, so prices are good as well.

GIFT ORDERS
We have Gift Orders available. Please ask us about them.

 

 

 

 

©2025 Flathead Graphix
Illustrations ©2008, 2009, 2010, 2011
2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017,
2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2023, 2024, and 2025
Francisco and Sophia Aschwanden

Website design by Deborah Reade Design