“Scope of vision” inspired by the landscapes of Janco Dada

Continuing the special events for the 70th anniversary of the state, exhibitions of contemporary Israeli artists are also opening at the Janco Dada Museum in Ein Hod, who attempt to depict the local landscape through a direct dialogue with landscape paintings contemporary works created by Marcel Janco himself and which are exhibited in the exhibition Diario de Viaje by Raya Zommer-Tal. This is the exhibition Range of Vision, composed of the paintings of Marcel Janco as well as seven related exhibitions by Israeli artists. The exhibition can be visited until August 2018.

This exhibition attempts to show the way Janco viewed the landscape, with oil paintings from the time of his life in Europe and Israel, as well as works on paper, mainly from the 1940s. A significant part of the he exhibition is dedicated to sketches, drawing books and rare documents from the period of his work in the Research Department as well as a survey of the Planning Department of the Prime Minister’s Office which were found in his estate.

Marcel Janco has always been an artist for whom form mattered more than anything. The theme of painting has always served as a “pretext” to give form. The landscape paintings were a kind of play of surfaces and constructions immersed in light and shadow in his particular style. His work presents a constructed and abstract composition, for the most part, the landscape is only the frame, a sort of scene, which meets the needs of the composition. The scene takes place in the foreground of the painting and, behind it, the horizon, the mountains and the buildings, a sort of theatrical setting.

The 7 exhibitions are a variety of works and installations that have in common a different point of view on the landscape of Palestine, like how Marcel Janco evoked it at different times. The exhibition focuses on two main aspects: the first emphasizes the formal aspect in which Janco approached the dismantling of a defined and clear landscape, of the limit of abstraction through a line and a stain in his particular style. The other aspect emphasizes the content through which he chose to depict the landscape and its surroundings at a time when abstract art dominated the mainstream of local art.