Marans studied chemical engineering at the Technological Institute in Bucharest and at the University of Jassy. When he emigrated to the United States in 1924, he decided to become an artist and pursued appropriate studies in New York at the Cooper Union (1925-1927), the National Academy (1927-1928); in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1928); at the Cincinnati Academy of Fine Arts (1929-1931); and again in New York at the Beaux Arts Institute of Design (1932-1933). He became an American citizen in 1930 and taught at Brooklyn College from 1955 until his death. He specialized in religious sculptures and in those which expressed themes of peace. "To me," he was quoted as saying in 1971, "religious sculptures are sermons in stone, wood and metal."
Marans' first major American commissions were the figures of Eloquence and Friendship for the 1939 New York World's Fair. These were followed by a group of allegorical works for post offices in Boyerstown, Pennsylvania, and Chagrin Falls, Ohio. Religious works, mostly statues of prophets or saints, were executed for West Baden (Indiana) College; Rodef Shalom Congregation, Pittsburgh; Temple Emanu El, Houston; First Presbyterian Church, Beloit, Wisconsin; Har Zion Temple, Philadelphia; and the Church Center, United Nations Plaza, New York, among others. His Fairy Tales is in a private collection and the thematically similar Story Time is at the Sunnyside Branch Public Library, Linden, New Jersey.
Marans was active in New York art organizations, having been a member of the National Sculpture Society for which he served as secretary from 1947 to 1950; the Architectural League of New York for which he was vice president in 1954-55; Audubon Artists for which he was treasurer in 1955-56; and the Allied Artists of America. Among his many awards was the National Academy's 1967 Daniel Chester French Medal which was presented for his Oriental Rabii (cat. no. 42).
