Maria Ritter was born in 1899 in Nowy Sącz; she was the daughter of Feliks Ritter and Anna Wiśniewska. She studied painting, sculpture, wall art techniques and printmaking at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. This was the period of the most lively activity of the Polish artistic avant-garde. During her stay in France, the artist studied in Paris. During World War II, she was active in the underground, storing and distributing underground press publications. She lived in Nowy Sącz and was involved in social work, including organising a branch of the Association of Polish Artists, and was a councillor of the Municipal National Council in Nowy Sącz. During her artistic career, which lasted almost 50 years, she created several thousand works in various painting techniques: oil, watercolour, gouache, collage, wall painting. She also practised drawing, printmaking, and sculpture. The subjects of her works were portraits, still lifes, landscapes, religious scenes, genre scenes, and abstract compositions. Her early work is characterised by academic realism, solid forms, and luminous colours; in the 1930s she was influenced by colourism. The final phase of her work is a synthesis of form and colour, linearism and planarism with a limited colour palette. The artist presented her works in individual and group exhibitions at home and abroad. She received numerous prizes, awards, and distinctions. She was one of the most outstanding artists-painters in the Sącz region. She died in Nowy Sącz in 1976 and was buried in the family tomb in the municipal cemetery. Maria Ritter’s painting gallery and studio is located in the painter’s family home, in a historic late 18th-century tenement located on the corner of the Market Square and Jagiellońska Street. Maria’s studio is located on the first floor. According to the recollections of Sącz artists who visited Maria, the studio contained paintings, frames, primed canvases, cardboard boxes, folders, stencils and designs, a lot of various brushes, paints, and accessories necessary for creative work. In an attempt to preserve the atmosphere of the place, the function of the studio was symbolically marked by leaving a large table with tools and materials used by the artist in the corner of the room. The sculpture ‘Blue Head’ stands there, placed by Ritter herself. Near the table is an easel with an unfinished portrait of a cousin and an apron and beret – the work clothes – hanging from it. On the walls, the paintings are arranged chronologically, allowing one to follow the different phases of the artist’s work.