The image of a goat first appeared in Marcel Janco’s work around the time he immigrated to the Land of Israel in the early 1940s. Janco was a well-known artist and declared modernist who was firmly rooted in the European avant-garde movement. Upon his arrival he was immediately impressed by the new sights and landscapes, and the style of his painting underwent a change. The light of the Land of Israel permeated his palette of colors, and new topics, among them the local architecture, the land’s colorful inhabitants, and the indigenous animals, began to appear in his work. During the 1940s and 1950s the goats in Janco’s work usually are depicted in groups as part of the landscape, sometimes together with human figures, with the artist experimenting with colors and black and white tones.
During the 1970s the goat image began to assume a place frequently in the artist’s work. Janco’s goat is an object that fills the entire canvas, with the landscape pushed to the background. At first Janco planted the animal in a background that resembled a landscape. In his later works the goat appears to emerge from the abstract drawing. Sometimes these paintings use daring colors – a light-colored goat against a bright red background or a black goat emerging from a colorful background. The goat’s body is composed of lines that form polygons, echoing the rocky terrain of the Land of Israel. The goat’s head and tail allude to its essence.
The goat’s unique contours play a starring role in a series of ceramic bowls of various sizes that Janco made in the workshop of Itche and Aviva Mambush in Ein Hod. Using embossment or drawing by hand, Janco fitted the animal’s body to the shape of the bowl. Janco also produced three-dimensional works in which the goat’s body was composed of geometric shapes, similar to the Constructions series he began producing during the Dada period. Janco’s Israeli goat is always depicted in profile, with its head and body facing the right or the left, reminiscent of prehistoric cave drawings. Yet the design of the animal’s head also contains a great deal of humor and mischievousness.
Raya Zommer-Tal
Exhibition Curator