Maria Anto
Maria Anto
Maria Anto (1936–2007) was a Polish painter and draughtswoman. She studied at the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, graduating in 1960. Associated with figurative art, she developed her own distinctive painterly language. Anto created portraits, landscapes, and depictions of animals and fantastical creatures. Her painting was described as metaphorical, symbolic, and characterised by magical surrealism. Her work has often been compared to naïve art and the painting of the Italian Quattrocento. For the artist herself, literature was her most important source of inspiration. For several decades, she was a prominent figure in the Polish art world, and during martial law she was involved in the independent cultural movement. Anto was one of the few artists at the time to collaborate with an international gallery – Cortina in Milan. She held nearly 70 solo exhibitions and took part in around 250 group exhibitions in Poland and abroad. Her works are part of institutional collections in Poland and private collections across Europe and the Americas.
