MARCEL JANCO
A Man Killing a Raging Bull near a Walled Town (Mural Study).
Watercolor, gouache and ink on paper, circa 1945-50. 255x705 mm; 10¼x28 inches. Signed in ink, lower left recto.Provenance: Private collection, Chicago.Janco (1895-1984) was a Romanian-born Israeli 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 the Romanian art magazine Simbolul, with Ion Vinea and Tristan Tzara. 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. He fled Hungary in January 1941, narrowly escaping the Bucharest Pogrom, and ultimately landed in Tel Aviv, then part of British Palestine. The horrific brutality he witnessed during the Romanian Iron Guard and Nazi takeover of Bucharest informed his work around World War II and shortly thereafter, in particular the gruesome Straulesti Abattoir murders of Romanian Jews, among who was the brother of Constructivist promoter and author Jacques G. Costin, Janco's brother-in-law. However, later in his career, after settling in Israeli, Janco began painting landscapes in optimistic tones and many bucolic watercolors. Along with his significant contributions to early 20th century avant-garde art movements, he is considered one of the fathers of Israeli modernist art.