Maxa Nordau was from a Jewish family and was the daughter of Max Nordau, a prominent Zionist.
19 Facts About Maxa Nordau
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Maxa Nordau often travelled in the Middle East, and many of her paintings are portraits or nudes of Arab or Jewish women whom she met there.
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Maxa Nordau's parents were Max Nordau and Anna Dons-Kaufmann.
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Maxa Nordau's father was a doctor, born in Pest, Hungary, who was associated with Theodor Herzl in creating the state of Israel.
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Maxa Nordau's mother, Anna Dons-Kauffman, was a widow with four children when she married Nordau.
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Maxa Nordau's father wrote a book of fairy tales for Maxa with carefully selected messages, which he published in 1905.
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Maxa Nordau studied oil and watercolor painting under Jose Maria Lopez Mezquita and Jules Adler.
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Maxa Nordau married Kalman Gruenblat, and they had a child, Claudie Nordau-Gruenblat.
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Maxa Nordau became a member of the Societe des femmes artistes modernes.
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Maxa Nordau helped decorate the Palestine pavilion for the Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne of 1937 In 1939 her work was shown in an exhibition of French art in England.
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Maxa Nordau taught painting at the City College of New York.
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Maxa Nordau collaborated with her mother in a life of her father, Max Nordau: A Biography, published in New York by the Nordau Committee in 1943.
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The biography was translated by Ludwig Lewisohn, but Maxa Nordau was critical of it and the Morgen Journal refused payment.
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Maxa Nordau continued to paint and exhibit in various private galleries, and to travel widely in Palestine, Egypt, Syria, Morocco, Turkey and Greece.
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Maxa Nordau was influenced by her father's Zionist views but did not share his rejection of modernism.
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Maxa Nordau often exhibited very naturalistic paintings of nude female Yemenite and Palestinian models whom she met and studied during visits to the Middle East.
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Maxa Nordau made portraits of pioneer Jewish women in Palestine and other Middle Eastern countries.
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Maxa Nordau painted male and female Jewish settlers working the land in Palestine, and idealized desert landscapes.
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Maxa Nordau exhibited in Paris in the Salon d'Automne, Salon des Independants, Salon Societe Coloniale Nouveau, Galerie Zivy, Galerie Simonson and Galerie Carmine and others.