The East Village home where the Dutch artist Anton Van Dalen lived and worked for 53 years has gone on the market for $6.95 million, about two years after he died there at the age of 85. The four-storey, two-family house at 166 Avenue A is being sold by its co-owners, Van Dalen's adult children and the family of the glass artist Bill Schneider.

Van Dalen and his wife, the late psychologist Rebecca May Owens, moved into the building in 1971, five years after he arrived in New York from Amsterdam by way of Toronto. He kept the lofty, skylit fourth floor as his studio, making charged, iconographic art often informed by the neighbourhood around him. In 1990, in reaction to the Persian Gulf war, he painted the word Peace across the facade, turning the property itself into a work of art and a neighbourhood landmark.

The artist believed art should not be kept separate from the space where life and work happen, an idea he expressed in conversation about his final solo show at the downtown gallery P.P.O.W in 2023. The listing is being handled by Sotheby's International Realty, with photographs showing the studio floor and the building's distinctive frontage.

Van Dalen's work, rooted in the East Village's countercultural history, has been shown widely in New York and Europe. The sale of the Peace House closes a chapter for a building that doubled as both home and artwork, and its future will decide whether one of the neighbourhood's most recognisable facades survives intact.