Marcel Janco was born in Romania in 1895. In 1916 he joined a group of artists in Zurich and founded the Dada Movement. In 1922 Janco returned to Romania, where he worked as a painter, theoretician and architect. In 1941 he immigrated to the Land of Israel, and made his home here. In 1953 he established the Ein Hod Artists' Village on the ruins of an abandoned Arab village. In 1948 Janco was one of the founders of the New Horizons group. In 1967 he was awarded the Israel Prize. In his late years he worked together with friends to erect the Janco Dada Museum. Janco died in 1984, ten months after the inauguration of the museum.

Dada was a unique artistic movement which changed entirely the 20th century art. It was established in Cabaret Voltaire, in Zurich, by a group of poets, painters and philosophers in exile. The Dada soirees were characterized by spectacular shows, and included simultaneous poetry, avant-garde music, and dancers wearing masks. The shows involved teasing and enraging the audience, challenging all values of Western culture and art, which they considered obsolete in view of the destruction and carnage of the Great War. The Dadaists objected to the traditional aesthetics of their contemporaries in painting, sculpture, language, literature and music. The group published manifests and periodicals and mounted exhibitions. The years of their joint activity didn't last long, but the seeds sown in Zurich spread all over the world.