Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami is hosting My Name Is Maryan
, an exhibition reclaiming the legacy of Polish-born Holocaust survivor and artist Maryan. The show highlights the visceral, iconoclastic work of the artist, who survived Auschwitz and Birkenau before moving to New York and passing away in 1977.
The Life and Legacy of Maryan
Born Pinkas Bursztyn in Poland in 1927, the artist known as Maryan endured the horrors of the Holocaust, losing his entire family to the Nazis. After being held in work camps and eventually Auschwitz and Birkenau, he suffered severe injuries when Nazi soldiers shot him during the camps’ liberation, leading to the amputation of his leg. Following the war, he emigrated to Palestine in 1947, later moving to Paris in 1950, where he adopted the name Maryan to distance himself from his wartime identity.
He eventually settled in New York City, residing at the famed Chelsea Hotel, until his death from a heart attack in 1977 at the age of 50. Despite his profound trauma, Maryan resisted the singular label of Holocaust artist
. Instead, his work often featured grotesque, cartoonish figures he termed personnages
.
Curating the North Miami Exhibition
The current exhibition at MOCA North Miami, titled My Name Is Maryan
, represents a significant effort to reintroduce his work to the public. According to Chana Bugazad Sheldon, MOCA’s Jewish executive director, the project was born from both chance and personal history.
While the museum dedicates one small room to his Israeli period—featuring works like Crematorium at Auschwitz
—the rest of the show explores how his trauma reverberated through his broader, more abstract artistic output.
Artistic Rejection and the Israeli Narrative
Maryan’s time in Israel proved difficult, as his artistic vision clashed with the prevailing cultural identity of the newly formed state. Noa Rosenberg, curator of Modern Art at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, noted that the era favored a narrative of strength and national rebirth.
Modernist Journeys and Forgotten Artists
While Maryan’s story is one of survival and artistic defiance, other artists from the same 20th-century era faced different challenges in receiving recognition. Unlike Maryan, whose work was shaped by the trauma of the camps, Pressoir’s legacy is defined by her adventurous, independent spirit, including a 1927 bicycle tour across Europe.
Pressoir’s work, which includes intimate portraits of a Harlem dancer named Florita, reflects a different kind of modernism. Both artists—Maryan and Pressoir—illustrate how archives and institutional interest can determine which voices are preserved in the historical record. While Maryan’s work is currently being centered in a major museum retrospective, Pressoir’s life was reconstructed through the efforts of her nephew, Leon Dulac, who preserved her studio contents after her death.
The Evolving Landscape of Modern Art
The rediscovery of these artists coincides with a broader critical interest in revisiting the 20th-century art canon. Podcasts and series, such as Death of an Artist, have further interrogated the lives and deaths of artists like Lee Krasner and Ana Mendieta, challenging the traditional focus on singular, often male, art-world icons.
As MOCA’s exhibition demonstrates, the process of bringing little-known
artists into the light often involves balancing their personal tragedies—such as Maryan’s experiences with the Holocaust or his time in a straitjacket—with their creative achievements. The ongoing assessment of Maryan’s personnages
and his 1975 film Ecce Homo remains a key point for viewers looking to understand how the human experience is translated into art.
