Maria Pinińska-Bereś (1931, Poznań –1999, Krakow) was a sculptor, installation artist, and performer. She is considered a forerunner of environmental and feminist art in Poland, though she had an ambivalent relationship to feminism. In 1950–56 she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Krakow, in the studio of Professor Xawery Dunikowski, a leading exponent of Polish Modernist sculpture. Tied to the art community gathered around Tadeusz Kantor, in 1979 she became part of the Krakow Group, created on his initiative two decades earlier. Her works are held in the collections of Poland’s most important museums, including the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, the National Museum in Krakow, the National Museum in Wrocław, the Centre for Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, and MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, as well as the Migros Museum in Zurich and many private collections. Her work has been shown at solo and collective exhibitions in Poland and abroad, in recent years at Gender Check, Femininity and Masculinity in Art of Eastern Europe, MUMOK, Vienna (2010), The World Goes Pop, TATE Modern, London (2015), 20 – An Exhibition In Three Acts: Collection Revisited 1960–1982, Migros Museum, Zurich (2016), 56 Artillery Lane, Raven Row Gallery, London (2017), The Penumbral Age: Art in the Time of Planetary Change, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2020).