The sculptor Maria Papa Rostkowska led a happy life. Maybe that’s why so few people remember who she was.

Dear readers! Like the lives of most of Poland’s best artists, the life of the “giantess” and at the same time “fashionable kitten” (as the heroine of our article was variously described) was rich in tragic events. Yet simultaneously, it was an exceptionally successful and happy life. Even so, or perhaps precisely because of this, her name remains almost completely unknown in Poland. What to do? We’ve already grown accustomed to the idea that Polish society doesn’t exactly shower its outstanding artists with love.

The artist in question, Maria Papa Rostkowska, came into our world on 4th July 1923 in Brwinów (near Warsaw), the second of four daughters born to Bolesław Baranowski and his Russian wife Nadezhda Yadushkin (it’s worth adding that an admixture of Tatar blood flowed in the mother’s veins). The Baranowskis married in 1917 in Moscow, before moving to Poland a year later. Bolesław so wanted to have a son that within the family circle, little Maria was called Maciej (a male first name). This must have left a clear trace in her psyche, as she recalled this detail even in the final years of her life. But it didn’t interfere with her happy childhood. She spent a lot of time on her grandparents’ estate in Słonim, in today’s Belarus. Some of her most beautiful memories of that time are her stories about the wonderful horse Kasztan (Chestnut), who roamed freely through the park surrounding the house, and who every day at breakfast looked in through the open window, as if he wanted to