Marcel Janco was a Romanian-Israeli visual artist, architect and art theorist. He was the co-inventor of Dadaism and a leading exponent of Constructivism in Eastern Europe.
Background
Marcel Janco was born on May 24, 1895 in Bucharest, Romania, to a wealthy Jewish family. From a young age, he felt guilty about his wealthy lifestyle and developed a desire for social justice.
His father, Hermann Zui Iancu, was a textile merchant. His mother, Rachel née Iuster, was from Moldavia. The couple lived outside Bucharest's Jewish quarter, on Decebal Street. He was the oldest of four children. His brothers were Iuliu (Jules) and George. His sister, Lucia, was born in 1900.
Education
Janco attended Gheorghe Șincai School and studied drawing art with the Romanian Jewish painter and cartoonist Iosif Iser. At Gheorghe Lazăr High School, he met several students who would become his artistic companions: poet Tristan Tzara, Vinea (Iovanaki), writers Jacques G. Costin and Poldi Chapier.
In 1915 Janco began his architecture studies in Zurich at the Federal Institute of Technology where he was inspired by the philosophy of "Gesamtkunstwerk" - the concept that decor should be integral to architectural design.
Marcel Janco began his artistic career in 1912 by creating illustrations for the Symbolist magazine "Simbolul", co-editing it with his friends Ion Vinea and Tristan Tzara.
Janco and his friends created an artistic collective that would eventually become known as Dada. In February 1916, Janco, along with Tzara, Hans Arp and others, started infamous, anarchic performance nights at the Cabaret Voltaire. Inside the Cabaret nothing was taboo. Sex, death, vomiting, painting, nonsense verse, African chants, drumming, and kinetic, masked dances were rampant and shocked and exhilarated their audiences. Janco served as set designer, costumer, and performer at the Cabaret in addition to being responsible for crafting the terrifying masks worn by some of the performers. But, in the late 1919, he began to find life in the Dada disruptive and began taking his distance from the movement he had helped to generate.
By 1922, Janco had returned to Romania. He founded the modernist magazine "Contimporanul" (1922-1932), writing articles on a range of subjects including design, abstraction, architecture, film, and theatre.
He continued working in illustration, sculpture, and oil, but at this time also significantly established an architectural studio known as the Bureau of Modern Studies. By 1940 his studio had designed some 40 buildings across Bucharest including private homes, apartment blocks, and a sanatorium. His projects were defined by both function and beauty, incorporating sculpted reliefs in plaster (Imobilul Jacques Costin - 1933), triangular decorative panels (Imobilul Solly Gold - 1934), ceramics, stained glass, fresco, and innovative utilitarian details such as dual kosher pantries (Stelea Spatarul - 1935).
During the Second World War, Marcel Janco decided he would feel most secured in Israel, where he immigrated to in 1941. On arrival in Israel (under control of the British Mandate until 1948) Janco worked as an architect, taught art and produced numerous sketches reflecting his experience in Bucharest including "Two Nazi Soldiers Abusing a Jew" and "Tearing Out his Beard" (1942) and "Jews Forced to Wash Windows" (1941). But these works were not well received in Israel as the local population was, at that time, trying to look forward to what would be, not backward to what had been. Accordingly, he began to use a brighter palette, more reflective of the local Israeli light, and, although still exhibiting the Cubist and Expressionist style for which he was known from early in his career, a more abstract style.
In May of 1953, Janco established an artistic colony in a deserted Arab village near Haifa named Ein Hod. The same year, he taught at the Seminar HaKibbutzim college.
Marcel Janco died on April 21, 1984 in Tel Aviv, Israel, just one year after the opening of the Janco Dada Museum.
Two Nazi Soldiers Abusing a Jew and Tearing Out his Beard
Jews Forced to Wash Windows
Girl Portrait
Abuse - Two Nazi Soldiers Mistreating Jews 1942
Abstraction
Urmuz
Composition Duele
Café Concert
Cafe Arab
Mother and Children
Marina
Still Life
Euphoria Dada
Amsterdam
Bel a Zurich
Untitled
Abstract Construction
Four Figures About to be Executed
Mask
Soldier
Port
Illustration for Tristan Tzara's "La Première aventure céleste de Monsieur Antipyrine"
On the Way to Ein Hod
Figures in the Shuk
Villa in the City
Untitled
Fruit and Dishes on the Table
The Parade
Views
Marcel Janco never adopted abstraction completely because, as he explained to Hans Richter, he believed that one must always said something, but without being deformist or expressionist. His painting was oriented to make a strong expression.
Quotations:
"Born as I was in beautiful Romania, into a family of well-to-do people, I had the fortune of being educated in a climate of freedom and spiritual enlightenment. My mother, possessing a genuine musical talent, and my father, a stern man and industrious merchant, had created the conditions favorable for developing all of my aptitudes. I was of a sensitive and emotional nature, a withdrawn child who was predisposed to dreaming and meditating. I grew up dominated by a strong sense of humanity and social justice. The existence of disadvantaged, weak, people, of impoverished workers, of beggars, hurt me and, when compared to our family's decent condition, awoke in me a feeling of guilt."
"We couldn't agree any more on the importance of Dada, and the misunderstandings accumulated."
"Nowhere, never, in Romania or elsewhere in Europe, during peacetime or the cruel years of World War I, did anyone ask me whether I was a Jew or... a kike. Hitler's Romanian minions managed to change this climate, to turn Romania into an antisemitic country."
"We were nourished by Futurist ideas and empowered to be enthusiastic."
"The art of children, folk art, the art of psychopaths, of primitive people are the liveliest ones, the most expressive ones, coming to us from organic depths, without cultivated beauty."
Membership
Marcel Janco was one of the founding members of Dada in Zurich in 1916. He was also made a member of "Das Neue Leben" faction, which supported an educational approach to modern art, coupled with socialist ideals and Constructivist aesthetics.
In the 1950s, Janco was a founding member of Ofakim Hadashim ("New Horizons") group, comprising Israeli painters committed to abstract art.
Dada
,
Switzerland
1916
Ofakim Hadashim
,
Israel
Personality
In his childhood, Janco was an emotional, dreamy boy. From a young age, he felt guilty about his wealthy lifestyle and developed a desire for social justice.
Physical Characteristics:
Janco was described by fellow Dada artist Hugo Ball as a ladies' man, handsome and tall, with broad shoulders, winsome ways, and other qualities that no girl could resist for long.
Quotes from others about the person
Tom Sandqvist: "Janco was in effect following his friends' command, as his own preferences were soon closer to Cézanne and cubist-influenced modes of expression."
Connections
In late 1919 Marcel Janco married Amélie Micheline "Lily" Ackermann, a dancer, with whom he had a daughter. Her name was Josine Ianco-Starrels (b. 1926), she was raised a Catholic. His first marriage to Ackerman ended in divorce in 1930, and Janco married Clara Goldschlager, the sister of a childhood friend, Jacques Costin, with whom he had another daughter, Deborah Theodora ("Dadi" for short).
With his new family, Janco lived a comfortable life, traveling throughout Europe and spending his summer vacations in the resort town of Balcic. In 1931, Janco built himself a new family home, the blockhouse known as "Clara Iancu Building".