Janco, Marcel

Janco, Marcel (1895–1984). Romanian-Israeli painter, born in Bucharest. In 1915–16 he studied architecture in Zurich, where he became one of the most energetic members of the original Dada group. At this time he was producing constructions and coloured reliefs as well as oils and collages. He was something of an idealist, seeking a synthesis between abstract painting and architecture, and he was a member of a group of mainly Swiss artists called Das Neue Leben (The New Life), which aimed to remove barriers between ‘fine’ and ‘applied’ art and redefine the role of the artist in society. The group ran from 1918 to 1920 and organized exhibitions in Basle, Berne, and Zurich. In 1921 Janco visited Paris and in 1922 returned to Romania, where he was a member of the group Contimporanul, which published a journal of the same name. He left Romania in 1941 and became a Jewish refugee in Israel, settling in Tel Aviv. In the 1940s he abandoned abstraction for an Expressionist style in which he depicted his new surroundings. He was a member of New Horizons and in 1953 established an artists' colony at Ein Hod; at about this time he returned to abstraction in a more lyrical vein than that of his early work.