Marcel Janco Romanian, 1895-1984

Marcel Janco was born in Bucharest in 1895. A painter, sculptor, architect, and graphic designer, he displayed a passion for art from a very young age. He frequented artistic and avant-garde circles, notably becoming involved with avant-garde journals as early as 1910. Indeed, he collaborated with Tristan Tzara during those years, co-founding a journal; this initial partnership foreshadowed the intellectual affinity between Tzara and Janco, which would later continue in Zurich.

It was in Zurich, during his architectural studies, that he met some of the pioneers of contemporary art. Thanks to its neutrality, the city served as a refuge for many artists and intellectuals exiled by the First World War. Janco joined the circle of artists and intellectuals gathered at the Cabaret Voltaire, alongside Tzara. It was there that the Dada movement was born in 1916. From that time onward, Janco developed his first painted reliefs, alongside Jean Arp, and continued to work on abstract compositions. His architectural training is evident throughout his work; in a lecture given in 1918 on the relationship between abstract art and architecture, Janco explained that his creations stemmed from the interaction between the planes and surfaces of his architectural work. When integrated into the wall, these painted reliefs become architecture.

He broke with the Dada movement in 1919, deeming it sterile, and moved closer to Constructivism, alongside Arp.

He also distanced himself from Surrealism after a stay in Paris between 1920 and 1922. Upon his return to Bucharest in 1923, he brought the Dada movement with him. In a magazine he co-edited with Ion Vinea, he blended Constructivism, Futurism, and Cubism.
In 1941, faced with rising antisemitism and the persecution of Romanian Jews, Janco emigrated with his family to Mandatory Palestine. The Mediterranean light profoundly transformed both his painting and his architectural work. In 1948, he participated in the founding of the New Horizons group, which structured the nascent Israeli modern art scene, and then, in 1953, he founded the artists' village of Ein Hod at the foot of Mount Carmel, near Haifa—a community that remains active today.
A retrospective of his work was held at the Tel Aviv Museum in 1972. Marcel Janco died in Tel Aviv in 1984 at the age of 88. The following year the Janco-Dada Museum opened in Ein Hod, preserving his work and perpetuating the history of the movement he helped to found.