Illustrator Nominee: United Kingdom

Jan Pieńkowski
United Kingdom, Illustrator

My first attempt at paper engineering was making a paper castle for my father, when I was seven. We then fired a practical toy cannon at it with huge success; it burnt to the ground and made a black scorch mark on the wood floor. My great achievement was not appreciated by my mother.

- Jan Pieńkowski

Jan Pieńkowski was born in Warsaw in 1936, the son of an architect and an artist. During the occupation of Poland in World War II, Pieńkowski was forbidden to attend school; his mother taught him to read and write and his father encouraged him to draw. The family escaped to England, where in 1946 he went to school for the first time. At King's College Cambridge he read classics and English and designed posters and stage sets. He produced graphics for BBC children's television, and in his spare time started to illustrate children's books. His first book, an alphabet book called Annie, Bridget and Charlie, was published in 1967.

Pieńkowski's inspiration comes in part from his Polish childhood roots, which have provided the deep cultural understanding of fairy tale so evident in the mood and detail of his iconic silhouette illustrations that he used in his illustrations for Joan Aiken's story collections. These were recognised in 1972 with the UK's most prestigious award for illustration, the Kate Greenaway Medal for The Kingdom by the Sea. He won the medal for a second time in 1980 with Haunted House.

He has also used silhouettes with startling effect in his most recent productions: The Fairy Tales and The Thousand Nights and One Night. Jan Pieńkowski's skill as a paper-engineer had a pioneering influence in the creation of the modern pop-up book, with Haunted House, Robot, Dinner Time, Good Night and The First Noël. Phone Book and Door Bell added sound effects while Botticelli's Bed and Breakfast capers irreverently through the history of Western art. Jan Pieńkowski is equally well known for Meg and Mog, the series of books about a witch and her cat which he created with Helen Nicoll in the 1970s and which has been made into an animated TV series and performed as a stage play.

Nowadays, he works exclusively on the computer.