Graphic artist, film director, set and theatre costume designer, children book illustrator, post-stamp designer. A major artist of the Polish poster school, experimental animator, and art critic. Born 2nd January 1928 in Poznań, died 5th October 2001 in Berlin. Son of Alfred, the musician and painter.

This site contains two features on Jan Lenica.

Film Son of Alfred Lenica, the painter, Jan Lenica graduated from a secondary school of music in Poznań in 1947 and from Warsaw Polytechnic in 1952. He started to contribute drawings in 1945, published critical assessments of drawings, prints, posters and cartoons from 1948, and took over as the art editor of the satirical journal "Szpilki" in 1950. In 1954 he was appointed Assistant at the Chair of Poster of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. In 1957, with Walerian Borowczyk, he made his first animated film. Having made a few more, and having experienced problems with their release, he settled abroad, in Paris. In 1974 he lectured on poster art at Harvard University in Cambrige, USA. From 1979 to 1985 he was head of the Chair of Animated Film at Kassel University, and from 1986 to 1994 he was Professor of Posters and Graphic Arts at the Berlin Hochschule der Kunste.

Lenica took an interest in many arts. A noted director of animated films, he stood out as one of the finest artists of the Polish school of poster as well as making satirical drawings and book illustrations and designing theatrical costumes. His posters, prints and drawings were shown at numerous exhibitions in Poland and abroad. His art earned him a number of awards, including those of the Warsaw Poster Biennial, Karlovy Vary Film Festival, the Jules Cheret award in Annecy. His lifetime achievement was recognized with the Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation Award, New York 1987 and with the Smok Smokow Award of the Kraków Short Film Festival in 1999.

No record of the top achievement in animated film worldwide would be complete without mention of two Polish artists, Borowczyk and Lenica. Their joint film from 1957, "Był sobie raz [Once Upon a Time]", followed by "Dom [House]" from 1958 and Lenica’s individual films triggered a true revolution, turning this peripheral genre into an art capable of communicating the most complex, difficult and serious messages.

"I have always liked to move at the periphery of Art, at the crossing of genres. ... I have enjoyed ... combining elements which were seemingly distant, if not quite foreign, blurring the borders between adjacent areas, transplanting noble qualities to "lower" genres, in other words - quiet diversion", confessed Lenica.

Before Lenica and Borowczyk's films appeared, the animated film was such a less valuable genre in Poland. Considered to be addressed to children, it was devoid of major artistic, let alone philosophical, aspirations, and was ideology-driven to boot.

"Lenica and Borowczyk's brilliance did not reveal itself in technical innovation or inventiveness; on the contrary, it was demonstrated in their nonchalant approach to existing techniques and conventions", wrote Marcin Giżycki. "... Their films made no secret of the simplicity of means they utilized, camouflaged nothing, their movement and montage as simplified as possible. Just a few pieces of coloured paper, old photographs, junk objects, fragments of found drawings".

When asked about the innovativeness of their first joint films, dubbed experimental by the critics, Lenica ascribed it to their unfamiliarity with the previous achievement. The fact is, however, that the cutout technique used by Borowczyk and Lenica in their first films, and then by Lenica in a couple of his subsequent film, proved successful in producing effects which were funny and satirical, surrealistically grotesque, or absurd and horrific as in Ionesco and Kafka. Lenica did not find this formula satisfying for long, however, and having parted with Borowczyk, he went on to make combined films, live films, films with photographic stills; and, finally, cartoons.

Let us stop for a while to consider the philosophy of Lenica's films. They involve an artistic game, patterned on the experimental films made by Ferdinand Leger; a serious, Melies-like treatment of the picture; a reference to Chaplin (a man in a bowler hat appears in a number of Lenica’s films, starting from his debut); a ridicule of cultural clichés ("Nowy Janko Muzykant [New Janko the Musician]", "Fantorro - Le dernier justicier"); a surrealist game, like "Stilleben". Yet there is a deeper message in almost all of them. "A", Lenica's simply-structured tale of the struggle of a lonely man against the terror of the first letter of the alphabet, can easily be interpreted in terms of a conflict an individual and the machinery of the state. Such interpretation fits also "Monsieur Tete", "Adam 2", "Die Nashorner" and, particularly, Lenica's last film, "Wyspa R.O. [Island R.O.]". No wonder his films are considered pessimistic and catastrophic, and he himself admitted to balancing "between grotesque and drama". However, this interpretation narrows down the range of possible readings of Lenica's work. After all, he invoked the myth of Ikar ("Labirynt [The Labirynth]") as well as the myths of the lower culture, such as that of Fantomas ("Fantorro"); mitigated the Kafka-esque ("Labirynt", "A", "Adam 2") and Ionesco-like ("Monsieur Tete", "Rhinoceros") absurdity of existence with Max Ernst-like, surprising, surrealistic juxtapositions of objects ("Monsieur Tete", "Nowy Janko Muzykant", "Labirynt"); contrasted the beauty and order of the world of Art Nouveau ("Labirynt") with the monstrous shapes of skeleton-like dream beasts ("Landscape", the film invoking Lenica's Nazi occupation experience) or the grotesque and dangerous characters from the adaptation of Alfred Jarry's "Ubu Roi". Despite the variety of techniques, themes and genres, Lenica’s style is quite easy to recognize. Zdzisław Schubert wrote in 1999 that Lenica's work was very expressive and at the same time had a discernible intellectual dimension, each film conveying a personal message "revolving around the dilemmas of human existence".

Filmography:

• 1957 "Był sobie raz [Once Upon a Time]" (with Walerian Borowczyk) - animated film (cutout/cartoon), Poland. Lenica applied the simplest technique of combining geometrical figures cut out from coloured paper with a collage of silhouettes cut out from old magazines. A play with the form, it implied a deeper meaning. Awards: 1957 - Golden Lion in Venice; 3rd prize at the Animated Film Review in Warsaw; 1958 - Syrenka Warszawska; 1st prize at Mannheim.
  
  
• 1957 "Nagrodzone uczucia [Requited Sentiments]" (with Walerian Borowczyk), Poland. Made using the repollero technique (unanimated boards). About the work of the naïve painter Jan Płaskociński. Playful in form tale of requited love of a self-effacing young man.
  
  
• 1958 "Dom [House]" (with Walerian Borowczyk) - combined (some animated shots), Poland. Urszula Czartoryska wrote that "Dom" was characterised by "a free, loose structure, preference for inanimate objects and non-artistic creations of man, use of real objects, close-to-surrealist overall atmosphere". Awards: 1958 - Grand Prix at the Brussels International Experimental Film Competition.
  
  
• 1959 "Monsieur Tete" - animated (cutout/collage), France. Commentary by Eugene Ionesco. About the individual's struggle for identity (Lenica's recurring theme). At the end the main character becomes a model citizen: "Finally my head is like everybody's". Awards: 1960 - Emil Cohl Award, Paris; Grand Prix at Oberhausen; 1961 - FIPRESCI Tours.
  
  
• 1960 "Nowy Janko Muzykant [New Janko the Musician]" - animated (cutout), Poland. A pastiche of Henryk Sienkiewicz's short story of the same name, its spirit evocative of Mrożek's "Wesele w Atomicach [The Wedding in Atomice]". Its style remindful of a folk art paper cutting, it showed a cosmic village of tomorrow, a fulfilled utopia. Awards: 1961 - Złoty Smok in Krakow, Syrenka Warszawska; 1962 - ZAiKS (Union of Stage Artists and Critics) award for script.
  
  
• 1962 "Labirynt [Labirynth]" - animated (cutout and collage), Poland. Lenica's most acclaimed, philosophical, Kafka-esque film. According to Andrzej Kossakowski, "the artist's imagination has built an amazing vision of an inhuman world...". Awards: 1963 – Grand Prix at Oberhauseh, FIPRESCI award at Annecy, Zloty Smok in Krakow, art film award at the Young Artists' Biennial in Paris, Grand Prix in Buenos Aires; 1967 - special award for animation in Melbourne; 1973 – 5th place in the world animated film ranking at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival.
  
  
• 1963 "Die Nashorner [The Rhinoceros]", also known as "Rhinoceri") - animated film based on Eugene Ionesco's short story, West Germany. According to Lenica, it was about conformism. Aleksander Jackiewicz wrote: "A very funny film, and although made of mere lines and spots, of a purely graphic matter - a dangerous one". Awards:1964 – Special Award and Honorary Diploma in Krakow, Bundesfilmpreis - West Germany, Honorary Award of the French Action for Promoting Film Art Achievement, Mention of the Jury at Oberhausen, Honorary Diploma at Melbourne; 1967 - 1st Prize at Cordoba.
  
  
• 1964 "A" - animated (cartoon, combined technique), West Germany/France. According to Lenica, "It is a very simple film, with only one man and one letter in one set design. It is about a conflict between the man and the letter." Awards: 1965 - Grand Prix at Oberhausen, Bundesfilmspreis - West Germany, Grand Prix at Prades.
  
  
• 1965 "La femme-fleur [The Flower Woman]" - animated, France; an animation of Art Nouveau etchings with a commentary by the Surrealist poet Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues. Lenica said: "This is a film without a director, without an underlying screenplay idea - an experiment, an improvisation." Awards: 1966 - Golden Lion at Venice.
  
  
• 1968 "Adam 2" - full-length animation with subtitles by Eugene Ionesco, West Germany. Lenica called it "a sort of an intellectual comic strip". A trip across ages and spaces, remindful of the biblical Paradise; a struggle for one's individuality; a parody of Stalinism and totalitarianism. Critics emphasized the pessimism of its message. Awards: 1969 - Bundesfilmpreis, West Germany.
  
  
• 1969 "Stilleben [Still Life]" - Lenica's first feature, called by Marcin Giżycki a surrealist grotesque and the most unusual of the artist's works. West Germany. Awards: Prime a la qualite, France.
  
  
• 1972 "Fantorro - Le dernier justicier [Fantorro - The Last Arbiter]" - combined (live/animated), Francja. Made up almost entirely of still photographs. A grotesque story of an unlucky superman, with references to Fantomas' adventures.
  
  
• 1974 "Landscape" - animated, USA. Lenica's crackdown on Hitlerism and Stalinism, two adversary yet similar civilizations; called by Steven Weiner "Lenica's only film with a transcendental message".
  
  
• 1975 "Ubu Roi [King Ubu]" - medium-length animated TV cartoon based on Alfred Jarry's play "Ubu Roi ou les polonais", West Germany. Marcin Giżycki considered it "one of the best and the most profound adaptations" of Jarry's play. "It is ... a text which allowed Lenica to fully display his particular catastrophism in combination with humour and irony, to express his suspicion of big politics, big utopias and big words".
  
  
• 1979 "Ubu et la grande gidouille" - feature-length animated film based on Alfred Jarry's play, France. Lenica's second film based on Jarry's works. Said Lenica: "Although I have taken a lot from Jarry, it is still my Ubu, enriched with my war and post-war experience and thoughts".
  
  
• 2001 "Wyspa R.O. [RO Island]" - combined (live/animated), Poland. Starred the animator Piotr Dumala. Jerzy Wójcik called it an allegorical "live-and-trick [poem] about the unforeseen nature of human life, totalitarianism, enslavement".

Minor works:

• 1957 "Strep-tease [Striptease]" (with Walerian Borowczyk) - animated film, Poland.
  
  
• 1958 "Sztandar młodych [Banner of Youth]" (with Walerian Borowczyk) - animated film, Poland.
  
  
• 1961 "Italia 61 [Italy 61]" (with Wojciech Zamecznik) - animated film, Poland. Awards: 1962 - Srebrny Smok, Krakow.
  
  
• 1964 "Muriel" - opening credits for Alain Resnais's film.
  
  
• 1964 "Cul-de-sac" - trailer and opening credits for Roman Polański's film.
  
  
• 1966 "Weg zum Nachbarn" - animated film, West Germany.
  
  
• 1972 "4 mouches de velours gris" - trailer, France.
  
  
• 1972 "Cesar et Rosalie" - trailer, France.
  
  
• 1975 "Das Kleine Fernsehspiel" - trailer for a ZDF television programme.
  
  
• 1982 "10 X Telewizja [10 X Television]" - series of ten short-length animated films about television, Austria.

Films about Jan Lenica:

"Lenica", Wojtek J. Kukla, 1994; "Jan Lenica", Joanna Cichocka-Gula, 1995; "Wyspa Jana Lenicy [Jan Lenica's Island]", Marcin Giżycki, 1998.

Author: Jan Strękowski, July 2003.


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Lenica graduated from a secondary school of music in Poznań in the piano class before studying architecture at Warsaw Polytechnic in 1947-52. In 1954 he was appointed assistant to Henryk Tomaszewski at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. He was preoccupied with satirical drawing from 1945, regularly contributing to the satirical journal "Szpilki" as well as with book illustration, and started to make posters in 1950. From 1963 he worked and lived mostly in France and Germany. In 1974 he lectured on poster art at Harvard University in Cambridge, USA. From 1979 he was the head of the Chair of Animated Film at Kassel University, and in 1986-1993 he taught poster and graphic art at the Berlin Hochschule der Kunste, designing sets for the operas in Wiesbaden and Cologne.

. Lenica's work makes one of the key chapters in the history of Polish art of the second half of the twentieth century. His fame and recognition in Poland as well as international acclaim was earned by his poster art and animated films, the two areas in which he was considered one of the world’s finest artists. He is regarded as a forerunner of modern animation.

Lenica was an extraordinarily versatile artist, working at the meeting points of genres, blurring the borders, juggling with conventions and challenging esthetic standards. His works had a unique poetics. He was always attracted to unrestricted artistic experiments. He was – alongside Henryk Tomaszewski - one of the forerunners of modern Polish press cartoon, contributing to the journals "Szpilki" and "Wiadomości Kulturalne" and to the daily "Rzeczpospolita", and replacing the typical cartoon joke with an artistic feature bordering on the philosophical treatise. His early, abstract drawings were shown at the Modern Art Exhibition in Krakow in 1948.

Searching for his own form of artistic expression, he took an early interest in theatre and film poster. At the time of the Socialist Realism this allowed him considerable artistic freedom, releasing him from the obligation to follow the academic conventions imposed on other fine arts. In the early 1950s he was among the young graphic artists who created the famed "Polish school of poster". Indeed, he is believed to have coined this term when he used it as the title of his story on the Polish poster, published in the Swiss journal "Graphis". According to Lenica himself, three stages can be distinguished in the development of his artistic poster language. The first stage, in 1950-6, was influenced by realism. The works more mostly illustrative and conveyed the climate of the announced films or theatre plays. Then was the stage of "formal search", to use Lenica's term. The artist introduced different, experimental means of expression, such as collages of old drawings and paper cutouts. Around 1962 he started to make posters for the Warsaw Opera and embarked on the third stage of his poster design to develop his own, characteristic "handwriting". Lenica's posters are in fact gouache, watercolour, tempera paintings on paper. Sometimes he would also use cutouts and collage. He created his own, individual and distinct artistic language which used a capricious, flowing, wavy line betraying fascination with Art Nouveau and a simplified, detail-free form. There is no room for decorativeness or ornament in his posters. Conversely, they have a predatory expression and intense, at times monochromatic, colours. Lenica’s extraordinary skill created intelligible signs that stood for entire topics and produced a sophisticated, lapidary artistic abbreviation.

"Poster art seems closest to jazz: it is all about being able to play somebody else's theme in one’s own way" (Jan Lenica).

Lenica preferred to use two-dimensional forms, the space of his posters having neither background nor perspective. There was irony and absurdity in them, the artist creating a brand new, grotesque reality; he was also a master of poetic metaphor. Most of his posters resemble paintings; many were made in the gouache technique. The people in his posters seem to speak or cry out to the viewer; Lenica himself used to say that "a poster must sing".

Altogether Lenica made over 200 posters. Among his finest works is "Wozzeck" which was made in 1964 to Alban Berg's opera and won the Grand Prix at the Poster Biennial in Warsaw in 1966. It shows a huge red head with wide-open lips in the middle of the face. One gets the impression that the scream coming out of the throat reverberates, wave-like, in the concentric circles repeating the shape of the lips. Another famous poster, made in 1968 to Giuseppe Verdi's "Otello", shows an oval blue and violet form cut through by short, horizontal rhythms of black lines. One can recognize a head seen in profile. From its centre comes out a long, pink vaginal shape bringing to mind erotic associations.

Before leaving Poland, Lenica had illustrated children's books (most notably Julian Tuwim's "Lokomotywa [The Train Engine]". He resumed that activity in the 1980s, when he was commissioned by "bohem press", the Swiss publishing house, to illustrate a series of books. Using a combination of gouache and watercolours, he produced a mood which was totally different from that of his other works. His characteristic thick line created a lyrical and warm world of children’s tales populated with friendly animals ("Biały Niedźwiadek Timo [Timo the White Bear", "Mysz i słoń [A Mouse and an Elephant]", "Kolorowy ptak [A Bird of Colour]").

From the mid-1980s Lenica worked for the German (initially West-German) Post, designing a number of stamps, including the one to celebrate Bertolt Brecht's birth centenary. He drew inspiration from Polish folk art as well as invoking the style of modern children's illustration.

Selected solo exhibitions:
• 1948 - Young Artists' Club, Warsaw
  
  
• 1966 - Filmmuseum, Copenhagen
  
  
• 1966 - Galerie Schloss Oberhausen, Oberhausen
  
  
• 1967 - Visual Art Gallery, New York
  
  
• 1968 - Museum Villa Stuck, Munich
  
  
• 1968 - Wilanów Poster Museum, Warszawa
  
  
• 1970 - Twentieth Century Museum, Vienna
  
  
• 1973 - National Museum, Poznan
  
  
• 1977 - "Kwant" Film Club, Warsaw
  
  
• 1980 - George Pompidou Centre, Paris
  
  
• 1981 - Kunstverein, Kassel
  
  
• 1988 - Nykytaiteen Museo, Tampere
  
  
• 1989 - BWA Gallery, Zielona Gora
  
  
• 1990 - Haus am Lutzowplatz, Berlin
  
  
• 1991 - Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg
  
  
• 1996 - Espace E.S.A.G., Paris
  
  
• 1997 - Galerie Kyra Maralt, Berlin
  
  
• 1999 - Manggha Centre of Japanese Art and Technology, Krakow
  
  
• 2000 - Modern Art Centre at Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw
Major awards for graphic art:
• 1953 - 2nd prize at the Polish Caricature Exhibition, Warsaw
  
  
• 1961 - Toulouse-Lautrec Grand Prix at the 2nd International Exhibition of Contemporary Film Poster, Versailles, France
  
  
• 1962 - 1st prize, 3rd prize and mention at the 1st International Exhibition of Film Poster, Karlovy Vary
  
  
• 1966 - Gold Medal at the 1st International Poster Biennial, Warszawa
  
  
• 1980 - City of Essen Award for poster achievement
  
  
• 1983 - The Jules Cheret prize for the best animated film poster, Annecy
  
  
• 1987 - The Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation Award, New York
  
  Author: Ewa Gorządek, Modern Art Centre at Ujazdowski Castle, February 2004.
  
  
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