Maria Kiesner (b. 1976) graduated from the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (diploma under the supervision of Prof. J. Modzelewski in 2002). In 2009, she defended her doctorate titled City Before the Storm at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. In 2005 and 2007 she received the scholarship of the Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage. She works at the Institute of Art Education, Maria Grzegorzewska University in Warsaw. In the academic year 2015/2016 she worked as an assistant in the atelier of Painting and Drawing of Prof. Andrzej Bieńkowski and Prof. Łukasz Karolkiewicz at the Faculty of Design of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts and conducted her own painting studio in the Department of Fashion of the same Faculty of Design. In 2017, by a decision of the Faculty Council of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, she was granted the title of doctor habilitatus. Her works were presented at many individual and collective exhibitions, recently at the exhibition „Gdynia – Tel Aviv” in POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and Gdynia City Museum (2019/2020).
„I paint architecture and urban landscapes. I depict objects realistically, ascetically, without the staffage. I’m interested in forgotten relics of socialist modernism and modernism.”
