An architect of childhood imagination. Illustrator of fairy tales and theater. A sculptor of light.
Adam Kilian was born in 1923 in Lviv, a magical city where literature and music danced through cobbled streets as naturally as the wind through linen curtains. From a young age, he was immersed in theater—his mother, Janina Kilian-Stanisławska, founded the puppet theater Niebieskie Migdały (“Blue Almonds”), which would eventually become the beginning of a great artistic legacy.
Life was not easy for him. In his youth, he endured exile to Kazakhstan, served in Anders’ Army, and later joined the Royal Air Force in England. Amid the ruins of a postwar world, he studied architecture in Nottingham—a discipline that taught him structure, spatial harmony, and material design. Yet Kilian’s heart leaned elsewhere—toward light, movement, and fairy tales. Between 1945 and 1948, he studied at the College of Arts and Crafts in Nottingham, specializing in architecture.
After returning to Poland, he became director and set designer of Niebieskie Migdały (1948–1950), which later evolved into Teatr Lalka in Warsaw’s Palace of Culture and Science. From 1950 to 1988, he served as the theater’s lead stage designer and art director, and later as artistic consultant until 2012. Teatr Lalka remains active to this day. Over the years, he designed more than 300 stage sets for puppet, drama, and opera productions, as well as for television and animated films.
His imagination was boundless, but never chaotic. Working with visionary directors such as Jan Wilkowski, Leokadia Serafinowicz, and later his own son Jarosław Kilian, he crafted miniature theatrical worlds where every color, texture, and line was orchestrated like a musical score.
He created stage designs for Zwyrtała the Musician, Guignol in Trouble, The Kraków Nativity Scene, and Shakespearean plays like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest, and Balladyna, many in collaboration with his son. His scenography didn’t merely serve as a backdrop—it told stories. With layered spatial planes and vibrant rhythms, he built theater that was grander than life, yet as simple and honest as a child’s drawing.
But theater was just one part of his creative world.
Kilian illustrated more than 50 books, crafting visual poems for fairy tales and legends such as Pyza on Polish Roads, The Wawel Dragon, and The Legend of Rübezahl. His style drew from Polish folk art and traditional wall tapestries—naive yet wise, simple yet full of meaning. His illustrations were marked by sketch-like lines, crayon-like colors, a strong sense of rhythm, and an inner architecture that made his books readable even without words.
Kilian also brought his magic to animation and television, designing sets and puppets for animated films (Miotły, Mrozik, Niespodzianki) and beloved children’s programs like Jacek i Agatka, The Lucky Galoshes, and Sinbad. He could breathe soul into objects, into puppets, into shadow.
He received numerous prestigious awards: the Gold Medal at the Milan Triennale, the Order of the Smile, the Gloria Artis medal, the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, and the Silver Medal from IBBY. But it wasn’t medals that defined his legacy—it was his imagination. His tenderness. His humor. And his profound respect for children—not naive children, but the most real kind: sensitive, brave, and endlessly curious.
Adam Kilian passed away on June 25, 2016 in Warsaw, leaving behind a legacy that continues to live on the stage, in the pages of books, and in the memories of those lucky enough to grow up in his colorful world.
