Marcel Janco 1895-1984

In good contdition. Slight surface dirt. Areas where plaster is receded and canvas comes through (possibly inherent to artist's intent). Under UV: no apparent signs of in-paint.
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Describing Janco's work, Soren Heller writes of the artist's attempts "to deal with avant-garde topics, abstraction, and the relationship between the three-dimensional image and the two-dimensional base...The presentation of the still life as a blend of figurative and abstract, and the use of "unworthy" materials - the burlap and the plaster, which are exposed to the observer's eyes, are close to the approach of Synthetic Cubism...Janco employed Cubist iconography and Cubist principles - the dismantling and spreading of images on the base, the multiplicity of angles of vision, the accentuation of the two-dimensionality of the format, the combination of the figurative and the abstract, the combination of painting with exposed raw material - and out of all these elements he created a personal synthesis which is identifiable as his own to this day."  (Mordechai Omer, Editor, 90 Years of Israeli Art, A Selection From the Joseph Hackmey - Israel Phoenix Collection, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, November 1998-January 1999, p.246)

These two works by Janco illustrate his interpretation of geometric forms by fusing them in an oval framework. "As in Picasso's famous collage, "Still-Life with Chair Caning," 1912, the oval format serves to break down the traditional rectangular format, which in terms of art history is perceived as a window on reality.  The oval form, in Janco's work as in Picasso's, prevents the creation of an illusionary space." (Soren Heller in Mordechai Omer, Editor, 90 Years of Israeli Art, A Selection From the Joseph Hackmey - Israel Phoenix Collection, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, November 1998-January 1999, p. 240)