Born in Poland, Maxim Buzester was one of just three students to study with the Cubist master Georges Braque. He trained at the Bauhaus School in Munich, and in Paris under Pierre Bonnard, where he received a solid grounding in the avant garde techniques that were then at the cutting edge of Modernism in Europe. Buzester fled Nazi Germany in 1935, finally settling in the United States. From 1944, he painted and taught in New York, developing a striking style that suggests the influence not just of the Expressionists and the masters Bonnard and Braque, but the influence of post-war mid-century American art.

From the 1950s until his death, Maxim Buzester had 10 solo exhibitions at prestigious venues in New York. After his death, the Jewish Museum in New York mounted a solo retrospective of his work.