Maria Pinińska-Bereś, Trickle, 1979. Photo: Marek Gardulski, courtesy of the Labyrinth Gallery in Lublin

 

The artistic achievements of Maria Pinińska-Bereś are among the most original developments in the period of post-war art in Poland. Insufficiently appreciated by critics, the artist consistently elaborated a separate, independent form of creation, forming a coherent artistic language based on a very personal tone of expression. Her art is considered part of the feminist canon, however the artist herself distanced from such an explicit categorisation, rather accentuating the 'figure' of a woman as a subject of her work.

She graduated from the High School of Fine Arts in Katowice. In years 1950-56 Pinińska studied at the Faculty of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków in the studio of Xawery Dunikowski. In 1957 the artist married sculptor Jerzy Bereś. In 1962 together they initiated a cyclical exhibition-contest entitled Rzeźba Roku/Sculpture of the Year which was regularly held for nearly 20 years. In 1979 she became a member of the Kraków Group.

She began her artistic career with excellent figurative sculptures that evinced a tendency for expressive forms. She was one of Xawery Dunikowski's best students; he instilled a great respect for art in her, taught how to think in spatial forms and awakened a strive for authenticity of expression and seeking her own style. Her work Popiersie starej kobiety / A Bust of an Old Women was presented in 1955 during an exhibition at the Arsenal, but the title was changed to A Bust of a Workwoman. During the same year, the artist won third prize in the International Sculpture Competition at Zachęta for her piece Matka / Mother. Her subsequent works (Man with the Fish, Birth, The Birth of a Man, Master, Conqueror) were exhibited in 1958 at the Dom Plastyka/House of an Artist in Kraków, emphasizing their importance in creating the image of a woman.

Pinińska first used the color pink - which later became an trademark of hers - in her work Birth. In the early '60s, the artist began to gradually move away from traditional statuary sculptures for more abstract forms, ensuing the Rotunda series presenting heavy, cast in concrete forms associating with the language of Romanesque architecture, such as Rotunda with Votums (1961), Textile Rotunda (Bell Tower), Rotunda młyn / Rotunda Mill (1963). It was then that the artist started using a new material in her art – fabric. She placed the Rotundas on soft, quilted blankets and in the Textile Rotunda she used a fabric stretched on a metal rack as sculpture material. In 1964 she created Dama z ptaszkiem / Lady with the Bird, a concrete plate with a schematically engraved face of a woman under which the artist hung up a quilted vest with holes shamelessly denuding her breasts. Pinińska highlighted the sexual attributes of the gender.

Around the mid-'60s Pinińska-Bereś permanently eliminated the burden out of the sculpture and broke away from the traditional workshop. In years 1966-67 she created the Corset series (objects made out of paper-mache): Corset – Trapeze, Corset on a Board, Standing Corset. She refers to the historical connotation of the corset as subjugating the body to the shape desired by men(...). The corset seemed to me as a symbol. Its content faded, but it remained and inculpates.

These works are an expression of the artist's already explicit interests, more and more absorbed by personal topics; essentially the undertaken issues from a women’s perspective concern her intimate sphere. Rejecting the conventional, the artist recalls years later. I had to reach into my own 'I'. And this 'I' was a woman, with a whole baggage of gender issues. 

In 1968 she created her first piece from the Psychomebelki / Psycho-Furniture series, an assemblage entitled Stół II - uczta / Table II – Feast. It's a wooden countertop covered in drawings presenting a smiling face of a women and her bare thigh. The female body has been cut into pieces, like at a cannibal feast, the breast and leg made out of paper maché were separated by a gray linen cloth on which lay the cutlery. Pinińska once again manifested her interest in feminine matters that focus on the issue of the objectification of women, presented as a consumable dish. Her work, however, lacks of a declared ideological attitude of a fighting feminist; the artist was rather interested in penetrating a women’s nature, with all its psychological variety, intimacy, sexuality and its relationship with the outside world. She spoke bravely, but not vulgarly about the most intimate matters, often tenderly, not always completely serious, highlighting some absurdities of erotic entanglements.

Critic Andrzej Kostołowski has writtten that Pinińska preceded the Western feminist trend, since these kind of problematic aspects relating primarily to the critical analysis of roles ascribed to women, appeared in her work at the turn of the ‘60s and ‘70s- a few years earlier then it took place in the Western art. In 1969 next Psycho-Furniture is created: Stół jestem sexy / Table I’m Sexy, Maszynka miłości / Love Machine, Tratwa / Raft. The artist consistently effectuated them with erotic themes of a metaphorical and somewhat ironic sense, that were also present in some of her later works. Love Machine is an object resembling a drawer with legs that contains white-pink-orange attributes of femininity, rotated by a handle, as if love was reduced to mechanical movements. In the drawers of the Różowe zwierciadło / The Pink Mirror from 1970, Pinińska placed a pink torso and breasts of a women. In 1973 she created Czy kobieta jest człowiekiem? / Is a woman a human being? - an open white box resembling a coffin, with a pole on which there was a excavated women's corpse in shape of a bathing suit, covered in pink marks of women's lips. At the tip of the pole there was a tag-plate with an inscription: Production date..., expiry date....

Around the mid-'70s Pinińska-Bereś began creating soft, rounded, oval and delicate forms. She chose ostentatiously feminine light materials, like sponges layered with material, quilted fabrics, blankets, cushions. The formed shapes showed dents as if they participated in intimate activities. Their delicate, almost organic nature was emphasized by the dominating colors of pink and white. She explained that in creating these works she fulfilled a demand, that I could carry my sculptures myself. With the earlier works that were cast in concrete I always had to count on male support with the transport.

Pinińska's works began to take on the form of spatial arrangements that the author would always set herself, depending on the place of the display. She said, I participated in the birth of the installations; the furniture, its arrangement and interaction were sort of an anticipation of today's fashion.

As a sculptor she was blessed with a spatial imagination, strived for the perfect composition for all of the elements of her work, taking up bold experiments with its form. Although she abandoned the traditional technique, she remained to create sculptural forms. The artist developed an original imagery, somewhere between figurativeness and abstraction which consists of many meanings, not always possible to decipher.Pinińska-Bereś created her own language of forms, saturated with poetry; the poetic titles of her works comprise the whole composition, eg.

Rejs przez morza i oceany dookoła stołu / The Cruise Through the Seas and Oceans Around the Table
Gotowalnia Ledy / Leda's Toilette
Miejsce poetyckie / Poetic Place
Becik erotyczny / Erotic Baby Bedding
Przejście przez kołdrę / Transfer Through a Quilt
Studnia różu / Rouge Well

In 1971 she presented the first Existentiarium, a rectangular glass aquarium containing -as if in an isolated habitat- full feminine lips made out of paper maché, sucked against the glass walls like snails. The artist treated her Existentiariums as very personal statements on the subjects of love, motherhood and aggression.

In 1976, next to her sculpture-assemblages, Pinińska began to organize her works in outdoor  and gallery spaces, such as List-latawiec / Letter-Kiteand Kobieta nie tylko z drabiną / Woman Not Just With a Ladder. During the ‘80s Pininśka made a certain shift towards the social sphere, creating such pieces as: Odejście różu / The Departure of Rouge (1982), Ostatni promyk / The Last Ray (1983), Pokrowce - sztuka dotyku / Covers – The Art of Touch (1983). In the mid-‘80s, the artist began an original relationship with the traditional painting and sculpture. She created her own visions of, among others, The King and Queen by Henry Moore (1986), Burning Giraffe by Salvador Dali (1989), David’s Madame Recamier (1991) or Velazquez’s Infants (1993/97). The wire welded ‘Infants’ are light, but no longer soft, although conceptually referring to previous works from the ‘Rotunda’ and ‘Corsets’ series.

The mysterious series Windows that Pinińska started working on in 1991 focuses on emotional landscapes and inner introspections. The Windows are flat objects made out of old window frames containing soft organic forms, conceptually appertaining to the Psycho-Furniture series.

The artist did not abide her major retrospective exhibition. She passed away before it was completed.

Selected major site-specific works from the 1970s:

List-latawiec / Letter-Kite
Sztandar autorski / The Author’s Standard
Bańki mydlane / Soap Bubbles
Przenośny pomnik pt. Miejsce / A Figurative Monument entitled Place
Transparent
Aneksja krajobrazu / Annexation of the Landscape
Żywy róż / Vibrant Rouge
Pranie I / Washing I
Tylko miotła / Only a Broom
 Umycie rąk / Washing Hands
Kobieta w oknie / Woman in the Window
Kobieta z drabiną / Woman with a Ladder
Działania na przyrządy kuchenne / Affecting Kitchen utensils

Selected group exhibitions:

• 1955 National Exhibition of Young Visual Arts Against war- Against Fascism, Arsenał, Warsaw;
• 1955 Xawery Dunikowski i jego uczniowie/ Xawery Dunikowski and His Students, CBWA Zachęta, Warsaw;
• 1957 Wystawa młodej plastyki / Young Visual Arts Exhibition, Oslo, Bergen, Narwik (Norway);
• 1964 20 lat Polskiej Rzeczypospolitej Ludowej w twórczości plastycznej, TPSP Palace of Art, Kraków;
• 1971 3. National Sculpture Exhibition, CBWA Zachęta, Warsaw;
• 1973 The Connoisseur in Poland. Cracow Art Festiwal, BWA, Kraków;
• 1974 Krakowskie malarstwo i rzeźba w XXX-lecie PRL, BWA, Pałac Sztuki TPSP, Rzeźba plenerowa na Plantach, Kraków;
• 1974 Artysta wobec cywilizacji, Contart 74, Studio Gallery, Warsaw;
• 1975 Dziesięciu artystów prezentuje nowe i najnowsze (AICA), National Museum, Poznań;
• 1975 Xawery Dunikowski i uczniowie. Wystawa w stulecie urodzin Xawerego Dunikowskiego, Muzeum im. Xawerego Dunikowskiego, Warsaw;
• 1976 Rzeźba roku 1975 Polski Południowej / South Poland’s Sculpture of 1975 , BWA, Kraków;
• 1976 Format: Człowiek, STU Gallery, Kraków;
• 1977 14. Biennale rzeźby plenerowej, Middelheim (Belgium);
• 1979 Wystawa plastyki krakowskiej, Darmstadt (RFN);
• 1979 Erotyka. Malarstwo, grafika, rysunek, rzeźba / Erotica. Painting, Graphic Design, Drawing, Sclupture. Dom Artysty Plastyka, Warsaw;
• 1979 8 x Kraków, Studio Gallery, Warsaw;
• 1979 Feministische Kunst Internationaal, Haags Gemeentemuseum, Haga (Holland);
• 1980 Sztuka Kobiet, Galeria ON, Poznań;
• 1980 16. Wystawa Grupy Krakowskiej, Krzysztofory Gallery, Kraków;
• 1982 K 18 Stoffwechsel, international exhibition in Kassel (RFN);
• 1983 17. International Biennale, Sao Paulo (Brazil);
• 1984 The intelectual trend in Polish art after World War II. Polish Performances, BWA, Lublin;
• 1986 Zapis 2, Labirynt Gallery, Lublin;
• 1988 The presentation of Labirynt Gallery, 1974-1988, Centre of Arts Tapes, The Alexandra Centre - Halifax, Centre En Art Actuel Le Lieu - Quebec, Canada;
• 1989 Labirynt 2. Galeria Labirynt prezentuje, New Space Gallery, Fulda (RFN);
• 1990 Cóż po artyście w czasie marnym? Sztuka niezależna lat 80., Zachęta National Galery of Art, Warsaw, National Museum in Kraków;
• 1991 Artystki Polskie, National Museum in Warsaw;
• 1991 Voices of Freedom, The National Museum of Women in Arts, Washington (USA);
• 1992 Natura natury / Nature’s Nature, BWA, Lublin;
• 1992 Grupa Krakowska. Prace z lat 1957-1992, Pałac Sztuki TPSP, Kraków;
• 1993 Żywioły, Państwowa Galeria Sztuki, Łódź; Galeria Domu Artysty Plastyka, Warszawa;
• 1993 Artyści z Krakowa, Zachęta National Gallery of Art , Warsaw;
• 1994 Hautevolée, Rähnitzgasse Gallery, Drezno (Germany);
• 1994 Ars Erotica, National Museum, Warsaw;
• 1994 Grupa Krakowska 1932-1994, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw;
• 1994 Klasycy współczesności / Contemporary Classics, an exhibition of the collections of the National Museum in Warsaw, National Museum, Warsaw;
• 1995 Poznańskie seminarium feministyczne. Pokazy artystyczne / Poznań Feminist Seminar. Artistic Presentations, Fractale Gallery, Poznań;
• 1996 Art in Poland: New Directions, University at Buffalo Art Gallery (USA);
• 1996 Impact, avant-garde cracovienne apres 1945, Polish Institute in Paris (France);
• 1996 Kobieta o kobiecie / A Woman About a Woman, BWA, Bielsko Biała;
• 1998 Blask, Galeria Sztuki Współczesnej Domu Krakowskiego, Nuremberg, Polish Cultural Institute (Germany);
• 1998 Chodząc po ziemi / Walking on Earth, Musée d'Histoire Vivante, Montreuil (Canada);
• 1998 Perz – Rhizom, Pryzmat Gallery, Kraków.

Individual exhibitions:

• 1958 Scultpture Exhibition (along with Jerzy Bereś and Tadeusz Szponar), Dom Plastyków, Kraków;
• 1970 Cellar Under the Rams, Kraków;
• 1973 Współczesna Gallery, Warsaw;
• 1976 Labirynt Gallery, Lublin;
• 1980 Krzysztofory Gallery, Kraków;
• 1980 Rytm Gallery, Kraków;
• 1982 BWA, Lublin;
• 1988 Krzysztofory Gallery, Kraków;
• 1988 72 Gallery , Regional Museum, Chełm;
• 1990 Krzysztofory Gallery, Kraków;
• 1991 STU Theatre Gallery, Kraków;
• 1991 BWA, Koszalin;
• 1992 BWA - Zamek Książąt Pomorskich, Szczecin;
• 1992 BWA, Sandomierz;
• 1992 Starmach Gallery, Kraków;
• 1993 Centre of Polish Sculpture, Orońsko;
• 1995 Exhibtion within the 6th International Drawing Triennale, BWA Avant-garde Gallery , Wrocław;
• 1996 Manhattan Gallery, Łódź;
• 1997 Egzystencjarium / Existentarium, Studio Gallery, Warsaw;
• 1999/2000 Maria Pinińska-Bereś 1931-1999, Modern Art Gallery Bunkier Sztuki in Kraków, Bielska Gallery in Bielsko-Biała, Miejska Arsenał Gallery in Poznań;
• 2001 Maria Pinińska-Bereś 1931-1999, Bałtycka Modern Art Galery in Słupsk

Author: Ewa Gorządek, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, November 2006. Translated by: Sylwia Wojda, January 2011

Thumbnail credit: Maria Pinińska-Bereś, Erotic Baby Blanket, 1974. Photo by Marek Garulski, courtesy of the Labyrinth Gallery in Lublin.