April 21, 1984
Marcel Janco, one of the founders of the Dada art movement, dies at the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer at age 88.
Janco was born in Bucharest, Romania, in 1895 and became active in the local art and literary scene at a young age, studying painting and drawing with Iosif Iser, a fellow Romanian Jewish painter and graphic artist.
In 1914, he departed Bucharest for Zurich to study math and chemistry at the Polytechnical Institute. A year later, he switched to architecture under the renowned Swiss architect Karl Moser. In Zurich, Janco came into contact with many painters and authors, including childhood friend Tristan Tzara, a poet and performance artist with whom he founded a literary and art journal, Simbolul, in Bucharest in 1912.
The artists with whom Janco associated were almost all exiles living in Zurich because of World War I. They opposed the war and shared social, political and cultural values. In February 1916, the group founded the Cabaret Voltaire, a Zurich club and bar, as “a center for artistic entertainment … run by artists, permanent guests, who, following their daily reunions, will give musical or literary performances.” (Hugo Ball, La fuite hors du temps, [1946] 1993, p. 111)
Janco was in charge of designing scenery and building sets for the performances at Cafe Voltaire, and his masks were his most notable work in this period. The movement these artists founded was called Dada, a term supposedly chosen for its abstract sound and its resemblance to baby talk. Dadaism attempted to universalize the experience of art and promote the idea that anyone could create art and anything could be art. As such, Dada incorporated a wide variety of objects from everyday life, including newspapers, machine parts, food wrappers and pipes.
Janco eventually drifted away from Dada. He moved to Paris in 1920, then returned to Bucharest in 1922 to work as an architect. He and his brother designed a number of modern buildings in Bucharest and other parts of Romania.
In January 1941, two months after Romania joined the Axis powers, anti-Jewish legislation and violence flared in the country. Janco and his family immigrated to the Land of Israel.
Settling in Tel Aviv, Janco was at the center of a budding Israeli art scene. He worked for the Tel Aviv municipality as an architect but grew increasingly frustrated with what he perceived as a lack of imagination among city planners. In 1953, he saw a cluster of homes on a hillside near Haifa and proposed developing it into an artists village, Ein Hod, which today is the only artists village in Israel and is home to the Janco-Dada Museum.
In describing Janco’s art before a show surveying his work, The Jerusalem Post stated, “Generally, Janco’s pictures are full of energy. … Figures and objects as well as animals, trees, clouds and atmosphere are always animated.” (Gil Goldfine, “Homage to Janco,” The Jerusalem Post, November 18, 1983, Page B1.)
