Marcel Janco - Legacy

Legacy

Admired by his contemporaries on the avant-garde scene, Marcel Janco is mentioned or portrayed in several works by Romanian authors. In the 1910s, Vinea dedicated him the poem "Tuzla", which is one of his first contributions to modernist literature; a decade later, one of the Janco exhibits inspired him to write the prose poem Danţul pe frânghie ("Dancing on a Wire"). Following his conflict with the painter, Tzara struck out all similar dedications from his own poems. Before their friendship waned, Ion Barbu also contributed a homage to Janco, referring to his Constructivist paintings as "storms of protractors". In addition, Janco was dedicated a poem by Belgian artist Émile Malespine, and is mentioned in one of Marinetti's poetic texts about the 1930 visit to Romania, as well as in the verse of neo-Dadaist Valery Oisteanu. Janco's portrait was painted by colleague Victor Brauner, in 1924.

According to Sandqvist, there are three competing aspects in Janco's legacy, which relate to the complexity of his profile: "In Western cultural history Marcel Janco is best known as one of the founding members of Dada in Zurich in 1916. Regarding the Romanian avant-garde in the interwar period Marcel Hermann Iancu is more known as the spider in the web and as the designer of a great number of Romania's first constructivist buildings . On the other hand, in Israel Marcel Janco is best known as the 'father' of the artists' colony of Ein Hod and for his pedagogic achievements in the young Jewish state." Janco's memory is principally maintained by his Ein Hod museum. The building was damaged by the 2010 forest fire, but reopened and grew to include a permanent exhibit of Janco's art. Janco's paintings still have a measurable impact on the contemporary Israeli avant-garde, which is largely divided between the abstractionism he helped introduce and the neorealistic disciples of Michail Grobman and Avraham Ofek.

The Romanian communist regime, which cracked down on modernism, reconfirmed the confiscation of villas built by the Birou de Studii Moderne, which it then leased to other families. One of these lodgings, the Wexler Villa, was assigned as the residence of communist poet Eugen Jebeleanu. The regime tended to ignore Janco's contributions, which were not listed in the architectural who's who, and it became standard practice to generally omit references to his Jewish ethnicity. He was however honored with a special issue of Secolul 20 literary magazine, in 1979, and interviewed for Tribuna and Luceafărul journals (1981, 1984). His architectural legacy was affected by the large-scale demolition program of the 1980s. Most of the buildings were spared, however, because they are scattered throughout residential Bucharest. Some 20 of his Bucharest structures were still standing twenty years later, but the lack of a renovation program and the shortages of late communism brought steady decay.

After the Romanian Revolution of 1989, Marcel Janco's buildings were subject to legal battles, as the original owners and their descendants were allowed to contest the nationalization. These landmarks, like other modernist assets, became treasured real estate: in 1996, a Janco house was valued at 500,000 United States dollars. The sale of such property happened at a fast pace, reportedly surpassing the standardized conservation effort, and experts noted with alarm that Janco villas were being defaced with anachronistic additions, such as insulated glazing and structural interventions, or eclipsed by the newer highrise. In 2008, despite calls from within the academic community, only three of his buildings had been inscribed in the National Register of Historic Monuments.

Janco was again being referenced as a possible model for new generations of Romanian architects and urban planners. In a 2011 article, poet and architect August Ioan claimed: "Romanian architecture is, apart from its few years with Marcel Janco, one that has denied itself experimentation, projective thinking, anticipation. it is content with imports, copies, nuances or pure and simple stagnation." This stance is contrasted by that of designer Radu Comşa, who argues that praise for Janco often lacks "the recoil of objectivity". Janco's programmatic texts on the issue were collected and reviewed by historian Andrei Pippidi in the 2003 retrospective anthology Bucureşti – Istorie şi urbanism ("Bucharest. History and Urban Planning"). Following a proposal formulated by poet and publicist Nicolae Tzone at the Bucharest Conference on Surrealism, in 2001, Janco's sketch for Vinea's "country workshop" was used in designing Bucharest's ICARE, the Institute for the Study of the Romanian and European Avant-garde. The Bazaltin building is used as the offices of TVR Cultural station.

In the realm of visual arts, curators Anca Bocăneţ and Dana Herbay organized a centennial Marcel Janco exhibit at the Bucharest Museum of Art (MNAR), with additional contributions from writer Magda Cârneci. In 2000, his work was featured in the "Jewish Art of Romania" retrospective, hosted by Cotroceni Palace. The local art market rediscovered Janco's art, and, in June 2009, one of his seascapes sold in auction for 130,000 Euro, the second largest sum ever fetched by a painting in Romania. There was a noted increase in his overall market value, and he became interesting to art forgers.

Outside Romania, Janco's work has been reviewed in specialized monographs by Harry Seiwert (1993) and Michael Ilk (2001). His work as painter and sculptor has been dedicated special exhibits in Berlin, Essen (Museum Folkwang) and Budapest, while his architecture was presented abroad with exhibitions at the Technical University Munich and the Bauhaus Center. Among the events showcasing Janco's art, some focused exclusively on his rediscovered Holocaust paintings and drawings. These shows include On the Edge (Yad Vashem, 1990) and Destine la răscruce ("Destinies at Crossroads", MNAR, 2011). His canvasses and collages went on sale at Bonhams and Sotheby's.