Maria Teresa Kuczynska (b. 1948), Columna, 2007

Works in sculpture, ceramics, painting and drawing. Studied 1965-71 at the State Higher School of Fine Arts (now the Academy of Fine Arts) in Gdansk under Prof. Stanislaw Horno-Poplawski. She received her diploma with honors in architectural sculpture in 1971. After graduation, she became an assistant at the Faculty of Painting and Sculpture at the same school. In the 1970s, she collaborated with architects as part of the "Habitat" group. In 1978, she received a gold medal in the International Competition of Artistic Ceramics in Faenza, and in the next edition of this competition - the Grand Prix (1979). She participated in numerous exhibitions at home and abroad, which allowed her to develop an international career. In 1983 she moved to Australia, where many of her works were situated in the public spaces of Melbourne, Sydney (including a monumental sculptural group in the portal of the Australian Family Court, 1993-94) and other cities. She has won many prizes, such as the award of the Department of Art and Monuments of the City of Adelaide (1992), the Grand Prix in the Daniel Chodowiecki Competition organized by the Akademie der Künste in Berlin (1994), is a winner of the Pomeranian Griffin (2001), the international Antoine Bourdelle competition (2002), the Muse of Sopot Award (2003), and others. In 2001 she taught at the Institute of Glass and Ceramics in Hohr-Grenzhausen, Germany. In 2003 she had an exhibition at the Bourdelle Museum in Paris. In 2004, she was invited by the Sydney National Gallery to represent Sydney with a ceramic sculpture in the Olympic Park in Athens.
In 2017, she received a Special Award at the prestigious Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale in Korea.