The Jewish painter Pinchas Burstein, better known as Maryan, was the only member of his family to survive the horror of the Nazi concentration camps. After the war he emigrated to Israel, where he began studying graphic design.

From 1950 he studied art at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris under Ferdinand Léger. From this point on he signed his work using the pseudonym ‘Maryan’, at times ‘Maryan S. Maryan’.

In 1962 he moved to New York and was granted U.S. citizenship in 1969. He died of a heart attack in 1977 in New York.

His often strange, almost caricature-like figurative and colourful work is usually categorized as expressionism. They can be found in the largest American and French collections, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York or the Musée National d’Art Moderne Centre George Pompidou in Paris.