Polske Surrealister, Charlottenborg, Exhibition of Polish Painters in Denmark, 1970
Mardi Gras Ball, A Benefit for the Art Galleries, The Friends of Hopkins Center, USA, 1974
King Lear, A Play by William Shakespeare, 2001
Madagascar Queens Solder, Theater play Julian Tuwim, 1998
It really feels as if it was only yesterday that I met this great artist. The International Short and Documentary Film Festival honoured his cinematic creations with a special prize. We sat talking in the hall of the largest cinema in Krakow, and he told me of his plans for the future, his preparation for his new film, and just a little later I opened his first individual exhibition in Krakow.
Regretfully, today he is no longer with us.
A man of extraordinary talent and many faceted artistic interests who was, to my generation in practical terms mysterious and inaccessible. I first encountered his work, chiefly from posters, almost from the time of my childhood. When I was growing up, he was already living abroad. I learned of his first major prize, for the poster "Wozzek", from the radio, and about his first individual exhibition in Poland from the press. However, it would have been difficult for me to make the journey to Poznan to see it. Undaunted, I continued in my dogged pursuit of his work. Films, posters, illustrations, and postage stamps which he had designed finally led me to meet him in person in Berlin.
In the years of my youth it was very difficult to travel abroad from Poland. And it was harder still to save up the money for a trip of that kind, and everyone had to find his own solution. I discovered that there was great interest in our Polish posters abroad. Hence it was that I crossed the border between East and West Berlin, the border between two different worlds, with a roll of posters under my arm. Literally next door to Berlin Zoological Garden's station I found a large students canteen, at the same time finding students who wished to buy the posters. It turned out that the posters were comparatively cheap.
Laying out the posters on the floor, presenting a pretty good art exhibition, I had not noticed the attention being paid to these proceedings by a man who was somewhat older than the rest of us. When I had finished "working" he asked me who I was and where I was from. At this point it turned out that he had heard that I was something of a collector. He invited me to visit him in his institute, which was literally a few metres away, into his workshop. This is how my acquaintanceship with Professor Lenica began. Diffidently I asked him at once whether I might in the future be able to count on access to his posters, which, being printed outside Poland, were unavailable to me. He promised that I could. When I wrote to him I always encountered friendliness, and he never refused me. I believe that he appreciated my role in the propagation of Polish poster art. An art which has, with every passing year, changed, perfecting its form, which the Polish poster deserved. This is partly due to him.
When someone asks me which Polish poster artist I admire most, I am placed in a difficult situation, and always name three, whose "images" I have enjoyed, whose posters I saw on the street as a young boy going to school.
Jan Lenica is and will always be one of those named.
Krzysztof Dydo, Cracow 26.09.02
Parsifal, Opera by Richard Wagner, Teatr Wielki, Warsaw, 1992
Fedra, Jean Racine, 1998
Balladyna, Drama Play by Juliusz Slowacki, 1994
Lawa, A film by Tadeusz Konwicki, 1989