Marcel Janco

Marcel Janco was a Romanian and Israeli visual artist, architect and art theorist.
He was the co-inventor of Dadaism and a leading exponent of Constructivism in
Eastern Europe. In the 1910s, he co-edited, with Ion Vinea and Tristan Tzara, the
Romanian art magazine Simbolul. Janco was a practitioner of Art Nouveau,
Futurism and Expressionism before contributing his painting and stage design
to Tzara's literary Dadaism. He parted with Dada in 1919, when he and painter
Hans Arp founded a Constructivist circle, Das Neue Leben.
Reunited with Vinea, he founded Contimporanul, the influential tribune of the
Romanian avant-garde, advocating a mix of Constructivism, Futurism and
Cubism. At Contimporanul, Janco expounded a "revolutionary" vision of urban
planning. He designed some of the most innovative landmarks of downtown
Bucharest. He worked in many art forms, including illustration, sculpture and oil
painting.
Janco was one of the leading Romanian Jewish intellectuals of his generation.
Targeted by antisemitic persecution before and during World War II, he
emigrated to British Palestine in 1941. He won the Dizengoff Prize and Israel
Prize, and was a founder of Ein Hod, a utopian art colony, controversially built
over a deserted Palestinian Arab settlement. Marcel Janco died in 1984 in Israel.

Submitted by Bruno Art Group