Jan Lenica

January 4, 1928 — Poznan, Wielkopolskie, Poland

Jan Lenica (4 January 1928, Poznań, Poland – 5 October 2001, Berlin) was a Polish graphic designer and cartoonist. A graduate of the Architecture Department of Warsaw Polytechnic, Lenica became a poster illustrator and a collaborator on the early animation films of Walerian Borowczyk. From 1963 – 1986 he lived and worked in France, while from 1987 he lived and worked in Berlin. He was a professor of graphic, poster, animated cartoon for many years at German high schools and the first professor of the animation class at the University of Kassel, Germany, in 1979. He used cut-out stop motion animation in his numerous films, which included two features: Adam 2 (1968) and Ubu et la grande gidouille (1976, but released in France only in 1979). He died on 5 October 2001 in Berlin, Germany.