The reconstruction of the room of New York’s Chelsea Hotel, brings the viewer to relive in an immersive way the environments frequented by the artist. Analyzing the work, it is possible to see one of the bullets received by the Nazis under his left eye. The work, which recalls the elongated necks of Modigliani and the style of Chaïm Sautine, represents in appearance a calm and serene young man. The exhibition opens with the only self-portrait produced by the artist when he was a student at the École de Beaux-Arts in Paris. The retrospective features all the works that characterize his life stages.

The reconstruction of The Chelsea Hotel in New York at MOCA Drawings that are displayed digitally and in rotation at MOCA, along with memorabilia from the film in which the artist gives a firsthand account of his experiences in Nazi prison camps with images from other social protest movements. It was then that, under the care of a psychiatrist, he filled notebook after notebook with drawings and texts that provide insights into his biography and the recurring motifs of his art. Post-traumatic illness and the psychological fallout from his experiences as a young boy overwhelmed him in the early 1970s.

Maryan’s life was as emotionally and physically turbulent as it was extremely prolific. The latter will also be represented in later years, in his notebooks, as a direct reference to his experience in the Nazi camps. The characters are almost always located in claustrophobic spatial environments, such as boxes. The “personnages” are rich in symbols, legible as the Star of David and pointed hoods that echo the Spanish Inquisition and the Ku Klux Klan, as well as rich in esoteric and personal references. In the ’60s he emigrated to New York, in the famous Chelsea Hotel, where he developed the concept of “personnage”: both historical and fictitious figures -which become in mature age, the subject of his works- used to explore psychosexual tropes and characterized by color combinations so strong as to be tragic. One of the Round painting by Maryan, 1975 With the end of the war, in 1947, he emigrated to what was then Palestine to begin his artistic training, first in Jerusalem and then at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he exhibited in important galleries, forging a distinct independent style but adjacent to the École de Paris and the CoBrA group. Despite having undergone the amputation of a leg, the artist found himself more than once face to face with death which however spared him allowing him to live a life that as the artist defined: “is no longer life”. He was imprisoned in various forced labor camps and then ended up in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau. From there began his journey to hell remaining the only survivor of the family. Private collectionīorn in 1927 to a traditional, working-class Jewish family, Pinkas and his family were captured in 1939 by the Nazis. They are based not on the whims of any particular governement but upon the recognition that all humans everywhere have equal ianlenable rights, that everyone as a memeber of the human family deserved to be treated with dignity.” Self Portrait by Maryan, 1952. The exhibition through this retrospective reaffirms the importance of the 1948 “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” at the turn of World War II, which states that: “Human rights don’t exist in the eye on beholder.

Maryan offered, with his life and through his works, a reason for hope: despite witnessing cruelty, oppression and exploitation, he was a resilient and courageous artist. The retrospective exhibits the works of this poignant and innovative artist, who during his short but prolific life – he died of a heart attack at only fifty years of age – was among the first artist- witnesses to directly represent the dramatic experience of the Shoah, while refusing the label of “Holocaust artist”.

Maryan is the stage name that artist Pinkas Bursztyn -from his mother’s maiden name- adopted as an act of radical self-definition after his liberation from the Nazis, who left him as the sole survivor of his family. The MOCA -Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami- in conjunction with Miami Art Week has set up the exhibition, retrospective: “My name is Maryan”, on display until March 20, 2022.

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