Maryan

Pinchas Burstein, known as Maryan S. Maryan, was born into a Jewish family. During World War II, he was deported to Nazi concentration camps in Poland, then sent at the end of the war to a displaced persons camp in Germany. He was the only survivor of his family. He lived in Jerusalem from 1947 to 1950, where he attended the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design for two years. His first solo exhibition took place in 1949 at the Youth Movement of Christian Association (Y.M.C.A) in Jerusalem. He moved to France in 1950 where he studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (E.N.S.B.A) and attended classes with Fernand Léger. In 1952, he participated in the Salon des Surindépendants and from 1953 to 1965 in the Salon de Mai in Paris. In 1959, he was awarded the Art Critics Prize at the Paris Biennale. After living in France for twelve years, he moved to New York in 1962 and became a U.S. citizen in 1969. In 1976, he was awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France.

Under Maryan's brush, art is modeled according to man’s image, presenting itself to the viewer in a trivial and grandiose way. Throughout his life, Maryan made art a vital cathartic means. His experience, his daily life and the society in which he evolved were for him a powerful source of inspiration; he observed, understood and translated them with force. He interpreted their paradoxes and jolts. The shimmering costumes and angular graphics of the so-called "tribal" art that Maryan accumulated in his Chelsea Hotel apartment had a particular influence on the graphics of his work. His paintings compose an astonishing gallery of caricatured and grotesque portraits. It is a feast, a masquerade, an incredible human menagerie that refers us back to our profound contradictions. It is the universal portrait of humanity and of an increasingly mad society.

Maryan died prematurely on June 15, 1977, at the age of 50 of a heart attack in his apartment in the Chelsea Hotel in New York. He left behind a meaningful avant-garde artistic legacy. The universe he created, the characters he invented, the symbols and the society he caricaturised are absolutely singular images of the time he lived through. Considered a major figure of the second half of the 20th century, he was the precursor of a free style of painting, recognizable by a strong graphic component, now inscribed in the collective unconscious through famous artists such as Keith Haring, Peter Saul, Robert Combas or Philip Guston. His large, thick, black strokes, which constrain an explosive color, announce the graffiti and neo-expressionist movements that will dominate the art world from the 1980s onwards. Maryan's painting contributed greatly to the development of a unique pictorial style that still exerts a powerful influence on younger generations of contemporary artists.

Several important retrospectives have been dedicated to Maryan, including at the Spertus Museum, Chicago, USA, in 1996; at the Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaïsme (mahJ), Paris, in 2013; and at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami (MOCA), USA, in 2021. His works are part of prestigious collections around the world: the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Museum of Modern Art in Paris; the Museum of Jewish Art and History (mahJ), Paris; the MuMa, Le Havre, France; the Museum of Tourcoing, France; the LAAC - Lieu d'Art et d'Action Contemporaine, Dunkerque, France; the Centre d'Art Contemporain de l'abbaye d'Auberive, France; the Museum of Grenoble, France; the Collections de l'État Français; the mumok, Vienna, Austria; the Staatliches Museum, Berlin; the Staatliches Museum Schwerin, Germany; the Municipal Museum of The Hague, the Netherlands; the Kunsten - Museum of Modern Art Aalborg, Denmark; the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel; the MoMA, New York; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, USA; the Art Institute of Chicago, USA; the Spertus Museum, Chicago, USA; the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, Chicago, USA; the Smithsonian Institution, Washington; the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami (MOCA), USA.

Solo show (selection)

2023

“My name is Maryan”, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel

« Une peinture vérité », kamel mennour, Paris

2022

“My Name is Maryan”, Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami

2014

« Maryan : La ménagerie humaine », Musée d’art et d’histoire du judaïsme, Paris

2013

Centre d’art contemporain de l’abbaye, Auberive, France

2012

Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris

2010

Muzeum Okr gowego, Nowy Sacz

2008

Michel Soskine Inc., Madrid

2005

Galerie de France, Paris

2002

Adam Baumgold Gallery, New York

2001

Musée des Beaux-Arts, Tourcoing, France

1998

Galerie Fanny Guillon-Laffaille, Paris

1996

Spertus Museum, Chicago

1990

Galerie Nova Spectra, La Haye

Galerie Jacques Benador, Genève

Claude Bernard Gallery, New York

1987

Galerie Ariel, Paris

1985

Claude Bernard Gallery et Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York

1984

Galerie Sonia Zannettacci, Genève

1983

Spertus Museum, Chicago

Galerie Espace, Amsterdam

1980

Château d’Ancy-le-Franc, France

1979

University of Haifa Art Gallery, Haïfa et Tel Aviv Museum

1978

Kunsthandel Lambert Tegenbosch, Heusden

Galerie de France, Paris

1977

Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York

Galerie Nova Spectra, La Haye

Galerie Ariel, Paris

Galerie Beno d’Incelli, Paris

Galería Arte Contacto, Caracas

1976

Galería Sen, Madrid

1975

Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York

1974

Galerie Keizersgracht, Amsterdam

Galerie Espace, Amsterdam

Galerie de France, Amsterdam

1973

Galerie Espace, Amsterdam

Galerie Nicolas, Amsterdam

1971

La Bussola, Turin, Italy

Galerie Nicolas, Amsterdam

1970

Galería Sen, Madrid

Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven

Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris

Galerie Nord, Lille

Allan Frumkin Gallery, Chicago

1969

Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York

1968

Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York

1966

Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York

Allan Frumkin Gallery, Chicago

Galerie Van de Loo, Munich

Galerie D. Benador, Genève

Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris

Galerie Nova Spectra, La Haye

1965

Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York

Allan Frumkin Gallery, Chicago

Galerie de France, Paris

1964

Galería Juana Mordo

Allan Frumkin Gallery, Chicago

Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York

1963

Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York

Allan Frumkin Gallery, Chicago

1962

Galerie de France, Paris

Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York

1961

Galerie Kunstnernes Kunsthandel, Copenhague

1960

Galerie de France, Paris

Galerie Fenestra, Helsinki

André Emmerich Gallery, New York

1959

Galerie Kunstnernes Kunsthandel, Copenhague

Galerie Birch, Copenhague

1958

Galerie de France, Paris

1956

Musée des Beaux-Arts, Tourcoing

1955

Galerie Breteau, Paris

1954

Galerie Le Miroir, Bruxelles

1953

Galerie Saint-Placide, Paris

Galerie 25, Paris

1952

Galerie Breteau, Paris

1950

YMCA, Jérusalem

Sans titre, 1956

Maryan

Personnage, 1955

Maryan

Personnage, 1969

Maryan

Sans titre, 1955

Maryan

Personnage, 1974

Maryan

Untitled, 1969

Maryan

Composition, 1969

Maryan

Sans titre, 1956