After graduating from the Architecture Department of Warsaw Polytechnic, Lenica became a poster illustrator and a collaborator on the early animation films of Walerian Borowczyk. He lived and worked in France from 1963-1986 until in 1987 he moved to Berlin. He was a professor of graphic, poster, animated cartoon for many years at German high schools and the first professor of the animation class at the University of Kassel, Germany, in 1979. He used cut-out stop motion animation in his numerous films, which included two features: Adam 2 (1968) and Ubu et la grande gidouille (1976, but released in France only in 1979).