The Nazi invasion of 1939 brutally shattered his childhood in an Orthodox Jewish family. Deported to Auschwitz, he suffered injuries that required the amputation of a leg after its liberation in 1945. The sole survivor of his family, he spent two years in displaced persons camps in Germany before reaching Mandatory Palestine in 1947, living briefly on a kibbutz.
His studies at the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem were interrupted by his participation in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. In 1950, he moved to Paris, where he adopted the name Maryan Bergman and enrolled at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts. Fernand Léger's teaching influenced his training, as he developed a personal pictorial language drawing on Picasso, Jean Dubuffet, and the CoBrA group.
His Parisian career flourished with major commissions and awards, but his refusal of French citizenship in 1962 brought him to New York. This American installation marked the blossoming of his work, with the creation of a vast body of work including his iconic "Personnage" series. His figurative style, often strikingly expressive, reflects the traumas he experienced.
In 1971, he began a series of autobiographical drawings, a direct confrontation with the wounds of his past. This introspective approach demonstrates his ability to transform suffering into artistic creation. He died suddenly of a heart attack in 1977 at the Chelsea Hotel, leaving behind a powerful body of work that questions the human condition through the prism of the extreme. Buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery, he symbolically rests in the city that welcomed and trained him artistically.
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