Collection: Maryan S. Maryan

Pinchas Burstein (1927–1977), later known as Maryan S. Maryan, was a Polish-Jewish post-expressionist painter. Born in Nowy Sącz to an Orthodox Jewish family, he was only 12 years old when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. Captured by the Nazis, he was imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp. After the liberation of Poland by the Soviet Army in 1945, Burstein was the sole survivor of his family and had to have a leg amputated due to injuries sustained in the camp. He spent two years in displaced persons camps in Germany before moving to Mandatory Palestine in 1947, where he briefly lived on a kibbutz. After studying at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem and participating in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, he moved to Paris in 1950. In Paris, he adopted the name Maryan Bergman and studied at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts under Fernand Léger. His artistic career flourished, with major commissions and awards. In 1962, after being denied French citizenship, he moved to New York, where he created a large body of work, including his Personnage series of paintings. His figurative, often violent style reflects the influence of Pablo Picasso, Jean Dubuffet, and the CoBrA group. In 1971, he produced a series of autobiographical drawings in response to the traumas of his life. Maryan died of a heart attack in 1977 at the Chelsea Hotel in New York, and he is buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris.