Ana-Melania (called Mela) Brun-Maxy and Max Herman Maxy (called M. H.)

With activities spanning several decades of the twentieth century, the artist, dealer, and museum director Max Herman Maxy and his wife, arts manager and salon host Ana-Melania Brun-Maxy, were instrumental in introducing and popularizing modern art and design in Romania.

M. H. trained as an artist at the School of Fine Arts in Bucharest. In 1922 he married Mela, whom he had met at the opening of one of his art exhibitions. That same year, they traveled together to Berlin, where M. H. studied painting with Arthur Segal, exhibited at Galerie Der Sturm, and established connections within the city’s vibrant artistic milieu. Back in Bucharest, he organized the first international exhibition of avant-garde art in Romania’s capital together with Dadaist Marcel Janco and the writer Ion Vinea. Prima Expoziție InternaționalăContimporanul (The First International Contimporanul Exhibition), named after the group’s avant-garde periodical Contimporanul,was held in 1924 at the exhibition spaces of Sindicatul Artelor Frumoase (Fine Arts Syndicate) at Str. Corăbiei 6. Hailing from eight different countries, the twenty-five participants included Constantin Brancusi, Viking Eggeling, Lajos Kassák, Paul Klee, Hans Richter, Kurt Schwitters, Karel Teige, and Teresa Żarnower. The exhibition caused a stir, not least because guests were greeted in Dadaist fashion by a jazz band playing in a pitch-dark room. Throughout the 1920s, M. H. maintained links with the international avant-garde through his contributions to both local and international vanguard publications, as well as via the prominent avant-garde magazine Integral,which he was involved in publishing from 1925 to 1928.

In 1926 the couple joined forces with Academia Artelor Decorative (Academy of Decorative Arts), Bucharest’s first school of modern applied arts and design, which had opened two years earlier. As an extension of the academy, Mela opened the first commercial space for modern design in the city (Str. Câmpineanu 17). Between 1926 and 1929, the showroom exhibited and sold modern decorative arts as well as paintings, sculpture, and graphic works. Notable collaborators included designer Andrei Vespremie, the academy’s director, who produced multifunctional metal lamps and geometric vases, and prominent avant-garde artist Victor Brauner, who likely contributed paintings and graphic works. Hans Mattis-Teutsch’s abstract wooden sculptures were highly sought after, as revealed by correspondence about sales negotiations. The academy’s clients were mainly well-off middle-class local collectors interested in the new modern style, such as poet and statesman Ion Minulescu and entrepreneurs like Abraham Leib Zissu and Micu Zentler. M. H. also exhibited his Cubist paintings and Art Deco textiles and furniture here and was considered the mastermind behind the space for a long time. Recent research, however, has confirmed that Mela owned, financed, and managed the business and played an important role in selecting the works exhibited in the showroom. Mela’s extensive network of artists and collectors was established through the weekly salon she hosted in the Maxy family home (located in the same building as the showroom), where Brancusi was a visitor. The academy’s commercial space was thus highly influential despite its short life, appearing on the cover of avant-garde magazine Integral, hosting modern dance performances, and depicted in fiction and on stage.

In 1927, following the departure of Vespremie from Romania, Maxy took his place as director of the academy. Two years later, probably due to both the economic downturn and the loss of Vespremie’s pedagogical vision, M. H. and Mela closed the academy to focus on a new and more personal venture. Studio Maxy opened in 1929 as a venue for exhibiting and selling M. H.’s own paintings and applied arts objects. The gallery also allowed M. H. to focus on his work as an advocate for reform in design and commercial display, aiming to bring modernism to the city’s streets and within reach of a wider audience. Located on the fashionable Calea Victoriei 77, Studio Maxy was one of the first spaces in Bucharest to feature a modern shop front with large glass panes that allowed passersby to admire new designs on display.

While he continued to sell his work through Studio Maxy in the 1930s, M. H. promoted the work of his avant-garde peers by organizing lectures and group exhibitions and maintaining links with international artistic circles. In 1935 a follow-up exhibition to the famous Contimporanul show of 1924 took place in the Sala Mozart on Str. Constantin Mille 4. This presentation, The Third Contimporanul Exhibition (the second had been held in 1930 with Romanian participants), was organized once again by M. H. and Janco, showcasing the Surrealist movement with works by Giorgio de Chirico and Leonor Fini among the cadre of international artists.

In 1950, after Mela’s death and the Second World War, M. H. was named director of the Romanian National Art Museum (known at the time as the Art Museum of the Romanian People’s Republic), an institution newly formed by the communist authorities; he would hold this position until his death in 1971. During this time, he was under constant surveillance by the Romanian secret police due to his Jewish origins and his continued interest in modern art forms, particularly Cubism, which indicated (according to the police reports) an attachment to “formalist” and “decadent” Western ideas. Nonetheless, during this period, M. H. was instrumental in shaping the historical narratives of modern art, taking advantage of the ideological thaw that took place in the country in the 1960s (which also led to a cultural rapprochement with certain Western nations) to recoup the contributions of the interwar avant-garde. His own retrospective at the Romanian National Art Museum in 1965 contained mainly works produced during the interwar period and was one of the first exhibitions to include such works since the beginning of the communist regime. During his tenure as director, M. H. purchased the works of his avant-garde colleagues for the museum’s collections and organized exhibitions of international modern art, including a Picasso retrospective held in 1968.