LENICA, JAN

(1928-2001)

The renowned animator, illustrator, and poster designer, one of the prominent members of thePolish Schoolof Poster. After studying music (piano) and architecture, Lenica turned to painting and poster design. With another poster designer,Walerian Borowczyk, he produced a series of animated short films that won international acclaim:Once There Was(akaOnce Upon a Time, Był sobie raz, 1957),Love Requited(Nagrodzone uczucia, 1957), andHouse(Dom, 1958). The filmmakers relied on cutout technique to produce the absurdist and grotesque spirit inanimation.Their works attracted a cult following and influenced future animators in Poland (Daniel Szczechura) and abroad (Jan Svankmajer and the Brothers Quay).

Like Borowczyk, Lenica also moved to France, where he made his first solo film,Monsier Tete(1959), narrated by Eugene Ionesco. His next films were made in France, Poland, the United States (where he lectured at Harvard), and Germany (where he taught poster design and animation at universities in Kassel and Berlin). In Poland, he produced a pastiche ofHenryk Sienkiewicz's novellaThe New Janko Musician(Nowy Janko muzykant, 1960), awarded at theKraków Film Festivalin 1961, andLabyrinth(Labirynt, 1963), arguably his greatest film, a political Kafkaesque animation that won several prestigious film festivals, including Oberhausen, Kraków, and Buenos Aires. In France, Lenica produced the winner of the Venice Film Festival—The Flower Woman(La femme fleur, 1965)—Fantoro, the Last Arbiter(Fantoro, le dernier justicier, 1971), andHell(Enfer, 1973). In the Federal Republic of Germany, Lenica started with a variation on Ionesco's playThe Rhinoceros(Die Nashorner, 1963), which was followed by his perhaps most ambitious project: the feature-length animationAdam II(1968). In Germany, he also made his first film with actors,Still Life(Stilleben, 1969), followed by the medium-lengthUbu Roi(1975), based on Alfred Jarry's play. In 1974 Lenica made his only American film, the semiautobiographicalLandscape. His last film,IslandR.O. (WyspaR.O.), which combines animation with live actors, was produced in 2001 in Poland.