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Artist or Maker: MARCEL JANCO 1895 - 1984

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Date:

Painted in 1921-1922.

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Description: STILL LIFE WITH FRUIT
signed JANCO (lower left)

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Medium: oil on cardboard

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Dimensions: 19 1/4 by 27 3/8 in. 49 by 69.5 cm.

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Provenance: Goldman-Kraft Gallery, Ltd., Chicago

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Notes:

Romanian born Marcel Janco arrived to Eretz Israel in 1940 and was soon recognized for his avant-garde approach to painting. Gideon Ofrat likens him to a trail blazer, noting that his prestige and intellectual attitude to painting had an important effect on the local artists and the critics. (One Hundred Years of Art in Israel, Colorado, 1998, p.149)

This early work exemplifies Marcel Janco's discourse with the achievements of Cubism as seen in still-lives. The artist packs together a wealth of visual information onto the canvas, flattening the images and creating illusionary space. The objects, including a bowl of fruit, a bunch of grapes and a wine bottle are broken up, analyzed, and re-assembled in an abstracted form. While discussing a similar work, Sorin Heller observes "the viewer moves among the objects and their parts, among the various layers, up and down across the painting's surface, up and down into the painting, yet remains inside the picture plane." (Ninety Years of Israeli Art, A Selection from the Joseph Hackmey ? Israel Phoenix Collection, Tel Aviv, 1998, p. 234)