Maria Husarska
Maria Husarska is a Polish visual artist and filmmaker. Working across painting, ceramics, photography and film, she is known for abstract and geometric compositions and organic ceramic forms that draw on natural motifs and ideas of transformation. She is based in Kraków and her work has been exhibited in Poland and abroad, including in Rome and Milan. She has been the subject of coverage in the Kraków cultural portal Life in Kraków and in a feature article and interview in the international art magazine ArtDependence.
Life and education
Husarska was born on 8 July 1981 in Kraków. She comes from an artistic family: her grandparents, Helena and Roman Husarscy, were Kraków‑based sculptors and ceramicists, and her mother, sculptor Joanna Husarska, is the granddaughter of Stanisław Burtan, an industrialist and member of the Polish parliament. She grew up in a setting closely connected with both art and the natural environment.From 1996 to 2001, Husarska attended the Liceum Sztuk Plastycznych in Kraków, specialising in exhibition design. In 2001 she began studies at the Faculty of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. She completed her diploma in 2006 in Zbigniew Bajek's interdisciplinary studio with a painting cycle titled Horyzont wewnętrzny – zewnętrzny and a photographic annex Tożsamość in the studio of Agata Pankiewicz. The diploma paintings were shown at the Pałac Sztuki in Kraków and, according to the artist's account, received a distinction from the Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Jana Matejki. The Horyzont cycle later entered a private collection at the Sultan Business Center in Dubai.
ArtDependence and related sources state that Husarska also graduated from the Krzysztof Kieślowski Film School with a Master of Fine Arts degree in film arts, majoring in film production organisation. The Polish film database FilmPolski credits her as a camera collaborator on the 2016 student short F51.0, produced by the University of Silesia's Faculty of Radio and Television.
Husarska lives and works in Kraków.
Career
Painting and exhibitions
Husarska works across painting, artistic ceramics, photography and film, with painting as the core of her practice. Gallery texts place her within the Kraków painting milieu, combining abstraction with a strong interest in colour and craft. Her work includes still lifes, landscapes and abstract studies.According to her website, gallery material and auction catalogues, Husarska has held solo exhibitions at venues in Kraków such as Galeria Teatru STU, Galeria Faust, Flower Power gallery, Galeria Pegaz, Galeria Dyląg, MONOstudio, Arsene Galeria Wiatrak, the Academy of Fine Arts Gallery and BIELEC – Dom Fotografii i Malarstwa, as well as at Galeria Schody in Warsaw. The cultural portal Life in Kraków reported in 2024 that she had exhibited in galleries in Rome and Milan, and noted that her diploma cycle is held in a private collection at Sultan Business in Dubai. Her works are also reported to be in private collections in the United States, London and Kyoto.
In May 2024 she presented the exhibition HopeFull at Arsene Galeria Wiatrak in Kraków, showing paintings, collages, ceramics and films. Her website and auction texts describe the related HopeFull and HopeFull 2.0 cycles as using flamingos and intense reds, pinks and oranges to explore life force and reconstruction after difficult experiences. An expanded version of the series, HopeFull 2.0, was shown at BIELEC – Dom Fotografii i Malarstwa later in 2024.
In July and August 2024 Husarska took part in the IV Międzynarodowy Przegląd Sztuki at the Struga Palace in Lower Silesia. By 2025 her works had entered contemporary‑art auctions in Poland: the auction platform OneBid lists canvases such as F/3 and F/7 offered by the galleries 101 Projekt and Pragaleria.
In 2025 the international magazine ArtDependence featured Husarska in its Art to Collect series, highlighting works including Elan Vital and Web of Life, and profiled her in an extended interview about her practice and themes.
Film and media work
Alongside her visual art, Husarska has worked in film and video. The team page of the Kraków online portal Life in Kraków lists her as an "operatorka kamery/montażystka" with an interest in telling stories through images, noting that she began with painting before moving into photography and film. She has also written photo‑essays and articles for the site on topics such as Kraków's fountains and the work of her grandparents Helena and Roman Husarscy.FilmPolski credits Husarska as a camera collaborator on the 2016 short fiction film F51.0, produced at the Faculty of Radio and Television of the University of Silesia in Katowice. The Polish film website Filmweb lists her as a producer on the 2019 film Place to Be.
Husarska is also the founder and owner of the film‑production company Gepard Film Maria Husarska, based in Kraków. According to the company's website and Polish business‑registry data, Gepard Film was established in 2018 and specialises in film and video production as well as design‑related services.
Artistic themes and style
Gallery texts and press coverage place Husarska's painting within the context of the Kraków art scene, where experimental approaches are combined with strong colour and traditional craft. Her work ranges from still lifes and landscapes to non‑figurative compositions, with abstract and geometric canvases predominating. She often stylises organic forms drawn from nature—such as birds, trees and fruit—into rhythmic lines and shapes, sometimes approaching calligraphic renderings of faces and birds.ArtDependence has described her works as weaving together expressive abstraction, geometric precision, calligraphic elements and organic ceramics, with recurring themes of transformation, transience and vital energy. In a 2025 interview, Husarska said that her art reflects continuous processes of change in the world and is shaped by anxieties associated with the war near the Polish–Ukrainian border, while also aiming to create a "safe space" of hope and joy where contemporary problems can briefly recede.
Discussing her 2025 painting Elan Vital, she related the work to drawings of peaches and their stones and to a period in which she experienced a miscarriage, describing the image of a peach tree as a metaphor for women's fertility and for the will to live and pass on genes; she characterised the painting process as a way of transforming trauma. Her HopeFull series, using a palette dominated by vivid reds, pinks and oranges and recurring flamingo motifs, has been described in gallery and auction texts as symbolising "élan vital", development and rebuilding after difficult experiences. Husarska has said that she hopes viewers will find pleasure in the colours, compositions and textures of her works and reflect on being present "here and now" on both sensory and intellectual levels.