Adolf Born

Biography

In 1966 in Prague, Adolf Born made an animated adaptation of Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” together with the American director Gene Deitch. It is considered the first screen adaptation of Tolkien at all. By then Born was better known as a magazine cartoonist.

He was born on 12 June 1930 in České Velenice, a small town on the southern border of Bohemia, on the Austrian side, where people spoke both Czech and German. In 1935 the family moved to Prague. In 1949 he entered the Faculty of Education at Charles University, in the fine arts department, but a year later he transferred to the University of Arts and Industrial Design in Prague, to the studio of Professor Antonín Pelc, and in 1953–1955 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, where he completed his course under Pelc. The strongest influence on him, by his own account and in the judgement of biographers, was František Tichý: Born shared his enthusiasm for the circus and variety shows. Among writers he felt closest to the fabulists Krylov, La Fontaine and Aesop, and among Czech authors to Bohumil Hrabal, Karel Poláček and Jaroslav Hašek.

In 1959, together with other cartoonists from the circle of the magazine Mladý svět, he became one of the founders of the group Polylegran, and he took part regularly in its exhibitions. From 1960 his work was shown around the world. In 1974 he was named Cartoonist of the Year at the world exhibition in Montreal, and at the humour festival in Bordighera, Italy, he won the Palma d’Oro.

From 1973, as it is written of him, censorship led him to concentrate more on animation and book graphics. The basis of his work is printmaking: drypoint, etching and above all lithography; he used colour lithographs for his bookplates as well. He illustrated Alexandre Dumas’s “The Three Musketeers”, Jules Verne’s “The Castaway of the Cynthia”, Kipling’s “The Jungle Book”, La Fontaine’s fables, the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, Vojtěch Steklač’s “Bořík’s Scrapes” (Boříkovy lapálie), and books by Miloš Macourek, among them “Mach and Šebestová” and “Žofka”. A cartoon series based on “Mach and Šebestová” (1977–2005) was also made, on which Born was one of the directors, along with Macourek and Jaroslav Dubrava. Among his own films as director in the 1970s and 1980s are “Pirates”, “Zoo”, “Neanderthal Man” and “Hugo and Bobo”. Later his animation accompanied a film series about poets: “How the World Loses Its Poets”, “How Poets Lose Their Illusions” and “How Poets Enjoy Life”. It appears in the last film of the series, “How Poets Wait for a Miracle”, as well, and that film was released a month before his death.

For the theatre he designed sets and costumes. For Antonín Dvořák’s opera “The Devil and Kate” at the National Theatre in Prague he did both, and for Vilém Blodek’s opera “In the Well” he staged a production at the music faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts (HAMU). He worked with Miroslav Horníček at the Josef Kajetán Tyl Theatre in Plzeň and designed fairy-tale productions for the Jiří Wolker Theatre in Prague.

From 1992 he worked with Czech Post. Stamps issued from his designs include those for the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America (1992) and the 740th anniversary of the birth of Marco Polo (1994), as well as the last stamp of the second millennium, the first of the third, and Christmas and Easter issues.

Born’s monarchist views were publicly known. He was awarded the title of Merited Artist (1988) and the Czech Medal of Merit, First Class (2003), and became a Knight of the French Order of Arts and Letters. In 2008 he was a finalist for the Hans Christian Andersen Award as a children’s illustrator. In 2013 he received an award for his contribution to animation at the Anifilm festival, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame of Czech comics the same year; in 2015 he received the Golden Slipper at the Zlín Film Festival for his contribution to cinema for children and young people. He himself held more than a hundred exhibitions.

Adolf Born died in Prague on 22 May 2016. The funeral took place on 27 May in the large hall of the Strašnice Crematorium. The asteroid 17806 Adolfborn (1998) and a park in the Braník district of Prague are named after him.