Maria Kiesner (1976), CORNGOLD ON FRENCH ( WHITE HOUSE ), 2019.

acrylic/canvas, 50 x 50 cm
signed, dated and described on the back: Korngold na Francuskiej (White House) | Kiesner Maria | 2019

Graduate of the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. She obtained her diploma under the direction of Prof. Jaroslaw Modzelewski. In 2009, she defended her doctoral thesis titled "City before the storm" at the Faculty of Art, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun. In 2005 and 2007 she received a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Since 2008, she has been working as an assistant professor at the Art Education College of the Maria Grzegorzewska Academy of Special Education in Warsaw, where she teaches the following subjects: painting and art teaching methodology. In the 2015-2016 academic year, she worked as an assistant in the Painting and Drawing studio of Prof. Andrzej Bieńkowski and Prof. Łukasz Korolkiewicz at the Faculty of Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, and independently ran a painting studio in the Fashion Department of the Faculty of Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In 2017, by the decision of the Faculty Council of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, she was awarded a doctoral degree.
"I paint architecture and urban landscapes. I depict objects realistically, ascetically and without staffage, I am interested in forgotten relics of socmodernism and modernism." The featured painting depicts a villa in Saska Kepa, Warsaw. "Designed by Lucjan Korngold together with Piotr M. Łubieński for Tadeusz Łepkowski, the single-family house at 2 Francuska Street in Warsaw was widely covered by the professional press. Today it is considered one of the leading examples of the Polish variation of the International Style of the 1930s, thanks in part to the balanced proportions of its cuboidal body. In her individual, painterly interpretation of the building, Maria Kiesner highlighted the most sculptural part of the building: the corner of the garden façade with the spiral of the external staircase climbing towards the balustrade of the second floor balcony" (Artur Tanikowski, Maria Kiesner [in:] Gdynia - Tel Aviv [exhibition cat.], Museum of the History of Polish Jews and Museum of the City of Gdynia, Warsaw - Gdynia 2019, p.267).