Max Hermann Maxy

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Max Herman Maxy, also known as M. H. Maxy, was a Romanian painter, art professor, scenographer and professor of German-Jewish descent. He is known for Cubist and semi-abstract figure painting and for his set designs, working for the Jewish theatre in Bucharest in 1939 and becoming its director in 1941. If Maxy’s earlier works belonged to a constructivist style, his later ones turned to a more realist approach and to the exploration of a narrative. While living and studying in Germany, he became a member of the Novembergruppe, a German cultural organisation of Socialist orientation promoting expressionism. Maxy exhibited at Der Sturm Galleries with, among others, Paul Klee and Louis Marcoussis and in the International Exhibition of the avant-garde group Contimporanul in Bucharest, with Constantin Brâncuși, Victor Brauner, Hans Arp, and others. Taking the ideas of the Bauhaus school with him, he established the Academy of Modern and Decorative Art in Bucharest in 1928. In the decades to come, his involvement in the arts scene in Romania, as director of art institutions and professor at the Nicolae Grigorescu Institute of Arts in Bucharest had a great influence on generations of artists from the Romanian neo-avant-garde.