MARYAN (Pinchas Burstein, known as) [Polish] (1927–1977) The Man with the Shofar, 1953 Oil on canvas. Signed and dated lower left. 59 x 72.5 cm Framed. Provenance: Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv. Vogel Collection, acquired in 1990 from the previous owner. Exhibition: Maryan Retrospective, Tel Aviv Museum, July 31–September 11, 1979, no. 8 (label on the stretcher). Maryan is a Polish-Jewish artist deeply marked by the Holocaust. He was the sole survivor of his family, which was deported to Auschwitz. After becoming a painter, he exhibited for the first time in Israel in 1949, then lived in Paris in the 1950s, where he studied at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts before settling in the United States in the early 1960s. In the 1950s, his painting oscillated between geometric figuration and abstraction, in which one can make out bodies, faces, and animal forms. In this work, we see the influence of Cubism, of Fernand Léger—whose classes he attended—as well as of Art Brut. Regarding his artistic approach, Maryan wrote: “As for my painting, I officially declare that I would rather have called my painting ‘truth-painting.’” This work depicts a religious Jew blowing the shofar. He is dressed in a kittel and a tallit. His tear-streaked face is highly expressive. The white, rectangular hands, positioned perpendicularly in the central part of the painting, are a recurring motif in the artist’s work. Keywords: Judaica, Jew, Jewish, Hebrew, rabbis, Torah, Hebrew, Hebraica, Judaism, synagogue, Zionism, Passover, Pesach, Haggadah, Hagada, Hagada, Hagadah, Passover, menorah, Hanukkah, Torah, Juden, Israelite, Israel, antisemitism, Dreyfus, Megillah, Sephardic, ketubah