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Jan Lenica: Philosopher With a Brush
| Article
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17943 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1990 |
1,966 Words |
| Author
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Frank Fox
Frank Fox is a professor of east European history who
specializes in the history and art of Poland in the twentieth
century.
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Jan Lenica, one of Poland's most distinguished artists and filmmakers makes his home in Paris, teaches in Berlin, and declares his independence from Western influence in several languages. "Das Leben im Western beeinflusst mich nicht," he informed me recently, adding: "Ich bin Wasserdicht. Nieprzymakalny. Waterproof." Since he is also fluent in French, he might have added, "Impermeable." But his protestations about being "waterproof" have two aspects.
At a time when ideas have too often been defined by geographical boundaries, walls, and barbed-wire fences, particularly in Eastern Europe, Lenica's universalism, originality, and independence as a thinker and an artist need to be acknowledged. He is, indeed, "the philosopher with a brush," as he has been described. But there is another aspect. His multilingual assertions also make it clear that beneath that calm, philosophical exterior, beneath the opaque layers of his brush strokes (especially his favorite, emerald green), there is a bottomless depth safe only for those who are "waterproof."
Born in Poznan, in western Poland, in 1928, Lenica is the son of a well-known artist ad musician, Alfred Lenica. He spent the war years in Krakow, where he was briefly imprisoned by the Germans in 1944. After the war, Lenica was well on his way to a musical career when he changed direction, instead going on to acquire degrees in architecture and engineering. Later he studied at the prestigious Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where he was an assistant to Henryk Tomaszewski, the dean of Polish poster artists.
In the early 1950s, Lenica, having established his credential as a gifted caricaturist at the
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