Architect and painter Marcel Janco, founding father of the Artists Village of Ein Hod and an Israel Award laureate, was born in Rumania in 1895. As a young man, he led the Radical Artists Group, which later became the groundbreaking Dada Movement that challenged the existing order and wished to break the boundaries of conventional art, literature, and poetry.
After fleeing Europe in 1941, Janco worked as an architect for the Tel Aviv Municipality and later served under Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, locating sites for national parks in Israel. Traveling the land, he chanced upon the ruins of the abandoned Arab village of Eyn Hud and convinced the authorities to let him establish a village for artists there.
All his life Janco was the undisputed leader of Ein Hod, an admired man who headed a group of creative and happy artists, until he passed away in the village he’d built on April 21, 1984.