
Composition with Red Arrow
<p>In 1915 Marcel Janco joined fellow artists Hugo Ball, Richard Huelsenbeck, and Tristan Tzara in Zurich, Switzerland, to respond to World War I and an emerging modern media and machine aesthetic. United in this "anti-art" movement, Dada artists led a creative revolution that profoundly shaped the course of subsequent art. Their performances and assemblages—works made with the stuff of modern life, including newspapers, ticket stubs, mechanical parts, food wrappers, advertisements, and hat racks—were intended to provoke awareness of the conventions of life that had led to the disasters of war. Born in neutral Zurich and New York, two cities that served as independent points of origin for the movement, Dada rapidly spread to Berlin, Cologne, Hannover, Paris, and beyond.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1918
- Dimensions
- 50.2 × 66.7 cm (19 3/4 × 26 1/2 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- Marcel Janco
Artist

Printmaking
Marcel Janco was a Romanian-born Israeli artist and architect who cofounded the Dada movement in Zurich during World War I. Working across painting, sculpture, collage, and printmaking, he developed a distinctive visual language combining geometric abstraction with expressionist energy. After relocating to Palestine in 1941, Janco shifted toward architectural practice and community building, designing the artist village of Ein Hod. His early Dada works, characterized by bold color and fragmented forms, remain central to twentieth-century modernism.
Full artist profile →More
More by Marcel Janco
Plate 10 from Futurists, Abstractionists, Dadaists: the Forerunners of the Avant-Garde, vol. I
1962 · Etching from an illustrated book with nineteen etchings (three with drypoint, two with aquatint, and one with aquatint and embossing) and one engraving
La Première aventure céléste de Mr Antipyrine
1916 · Illustrated book with seven linoleum cuts
The First Celestial Adventure of Mr. Antipyrine (La Première Aventure Céleste de Mr Antipyrine)
1916 · Book with seven wood engravings in black and blue and letterpress in black, with additions in pen, pencil, and brownish black ink, on ivory laid paper
Untitled (Street Band)
1915 · Linoleum cut with watercolor additions
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- Marcel Janco
- Year
- 1918
- Dimensions
- 50.2 × 66.7 cm (19 3/4 × 26 1/2 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1918-113551
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified



