My first glance at Jan Pienkowski’s artistry arose from my son Paul’s reading preferences. Paul was not an average child by any means. Surprisingly energetic throughout my pregnancy, Paul hastened his entry into the world by nine weeks. Afterward, I referred to him as my gift from above.
To shed light on how Paul continued to fascinate me, the first time I took him to the movie theater, Paul did not watch the show. Instead, he turned around in his seat and stared at the projector until the credits appeared. When I asked Paul what he thought of the film, Paul said that he was more interested in figuring out how the image reflected on the screen than he was in the actual movie itself.
Paul loved to discover how things work. So, he was drawn to pop-up books and their moving parts. Jan Pienkowski’s books were fundamental stepping stones of my son Paul’s pop-up book collection.
Until recently, I paid little attention to Jan Pienkowski’s background.
Jan Pienkowski was born in Warsaw, Poland the only child of Wanda and Jerzey Pienkowski. Pienkowski lived with his parents on a farm in the countryside. As a very young boy, Pienkowski was cared for by a neighbor who enticed him to drink his milk by telling scary stories about a Baba-Yaga type of character.
Jan came to believe that his caretaker’s formidable storytelling resulted in the impetus for his characters in the Meg and Mog books.
Pienkowski’s carefree existence on the farm was curtailed when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939.
As a toddler, Pienkowski’s family relocated to Warsaw, where his mother’s family resided, and his father served briefly as a bailiff. When Jan turned five, Jerzy, who had helped organize opposition groups, had to go into hiding for a year.
Pienkowski’s family fled Warsaw and voyaged around Europe, Vienna, Italy, and Germany, experiencing a myriad of setbacks. They often lived in unfavorable conditions, and for a period they had to sleep in troughs under train tracks.
When Pieńkowski spoke about escaping from Warsaw on Desert Island Discs in 2009, he nearly faltered conveying that piercing sounds and yelling still terrified him.
Back in 1946, the Pienkowski family finally reached Britain. At the age of ten, Pienkowski attended Lucton boarding school in Herefordshire. He learned how to speak English expanding his previous skills in German, Italian, and Polish.
Pienkowski’s interest in paper cut-outs, he said, rose from a wartime occurrence in an air raid shelter in Warsaw, where a soldier had kept the young Pieńkowski entertained by snipping newspapers into extraordinary shapes.
His enthusiasm for art evolved further at the age of thirteen when he began taking life-drawing lessons.
During his career, Pienkowski published more than 140 books for children. He described the nature of his work adding
I simply tell stories as pictures.
I love how Jan Pienkowski transformed his fears into magical tales filled with ingeniously crafted moveable parts. Despite his horrific primitive years during World War II, Pienkowski overcame his trauma by turning tragedy into skillful portable works of art.
Jan Pienkowski passed away on February 19th, 2022. He was 85 years old.
