Untitled
Maryan S. Maryan (Pinchas Burstein)
American, born Poland. 1927–1977
1967
A lithograph in which Maryan renders two distorted, masklike figures on a bench—part puppets, part wounded bodies—to dramatize psychological trauma, comic cruelty, and the fractured self.
You’d first notice the stark black rectangle that frames scratchy, gestural white marks and striped, bulbous limbs, making the figures read as both grotesque jesters and painfully human forms.
Part of Maryan’s postwar work, this print moves the painterly aggression of his grotesques into printmaking, using expressionist distortion to confront memory, identity, and the aftermath of violence.
Medium
Lithograph
Dimensions
composition (slightly irreg.): 19 3/4 × 23 3/16" (50.2 × 58.9 cm); sheet: 25 1/16 × 28 3/16" (63.7 × 71.6 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Kleiner, Bell & Co.
Accession
2020.1967
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
