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CHRONOLOGY TOP TO BOTTOM
1968-1976
Marcus Antonius Jansen, was predestined to a career shadowed by conflict. He was named for the Roman general Marcus Antonius, whose romance with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra led to the civil war that almost brought the empire to ruin. His family was living in the Bronx, in New York City, when he was born in 1968 in Manhattan. He lived in the city during a period of economic decline and the emergence of a graffiti subculture on subway trains and walls that changed the city’s visual environment and eventually became Jansen’s first lasting impression and influences. Jansen came from a working-class family and spent his first years in a high-rise apartment on Boynton Ave. in the Soundview section of the Bronx. He was raised by his grandparents and mother, a practicing nurse from Jamaica, to be later joined by his German-born father, who was a businessman and historian in Europe and an avid viewer of news and politics, which allowed Jansen to observe images of the Vietnam war and Dr. Martin Luther King on television during his formative years. Those images were destined to be reinforced by his own military service and reflected in his art decades later. Photo: Grandfather with Marcus on balcony in Bronx 12TH floor apartment. Soundview section of the Bronx - Jansen looking up at his fisrt families residency at, 880 Boynton Ave.,in the Bronx
With Mother and father, first visit to Amsterdam and in Germany 1969
The family left the Bronx borough and moved to Laurelton Queens, and while attending PS 156 at age 6, Jansen was included in a New York City student art competition and exhibited a stunning painting of a lion on paper at the Lever House, in Manhattan, introducing him to the world of public art exhibitions.
PS: 156 in Laurelton, Queens 1974, where he painted a lion that showed at the Lever House in Manhattan at age six.
Photos: Bronx and Queens, NY, 1970's
1976-1982
Jansen’s father took his family and left New York City during the cities steep decline shortly after a post-segregation era when interracial marriages had just become legalized and shortly before the explosion of the punk rock and hip hop art scene. Jansen was transplanted from the Big Apple to Moenchengladbach, Germany, his father's birthplace, located close to large American military bases nearby in Geilenkirchen and close to a town called Schinnen, Netherlands home to US Army Garrison Schinnen, a support base for US personnel assigned to nearby Allied Joint Force Command Brunssum which later became his introduction to joining the U.S. Armed Forces. Jansen was placed in a German-speaking Catholic school, where he faced linguistic challenges and severe racism as the only child of color as his personal introduction to Europe but excelled in art and sports more than academic subjects. 
Jansen transfers into a German school as only child of color
W. 72nd subway stop in Manhtaan 1980's where Jansen met WEST
1982-1985
Understanding the for him unexpected racial dynamics surrounding his son even in Germany, Jansen's father suggests for him to returned to stay with his grandparents in New York City during the 1980s subcultural movement over the summers in 1980’s while a rebellious graffiti art movement was dominating the city and served as his first major influence. Jansen became involved in art forms of the subculture, and quickly adopted graffiti writing as a vehicle of communication while being among the wave of artists to introduce it in Germany, impressed by the art that was altering the urban landscape in New York and Europe as he witnessed both emerge on both sides of the atlantic and early on was supported by the later TV host icon, Daisy Dee. 
First encounter with Robert Rauschenberg book 1984
Jansen later encountered a book about Robert Rauschenberg at a German train station in his teens, and although he had never heard of the artist, was fascinated by the cover depicting instruments mounted on wood in a golden color--Rauschenberg's famous combines. They exuded a strong urban, inner-city feel that he had not encountered in museum art.
Politics, current events and world history were at the forefront of discussions initiated by his historian father during much of Jansen’s upbringing. Growing up, he experienced challenges with family and audiences relating his paradoxical cultural influences, and sought new ways of bridging social, cultural and economic class differences in his art. It was the vibrant German Expressionist painters and up-and-coming graffiti artists he encountered during travel to Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels, and the action painters from New York, that left their strongest imprint on Jansen. Attracted by movement, color and motion, he is still drawn to these impulsive, rebellious avant-garde painters, and sees a common thread between the graffiti artists and contemporary masters that he explores in his work. Jansen believes that impulsive and subconscious work is a direct reaction to the oppressive politics and economically disadvantaged and regimented environment from which it arises. He states, “A civilized society is forced to renounce instinctive behavior; it is up to the artist to bring it to the surface.” 1986-1988
Jansen met Manhattan-based graffiti writer WEST Rubinstein, aka WESTONE, on trips back home who had already made his mark as noted in the book Graffiti Kings, by Jack Stewart, and is introduced to the artist by Jansen’s Godmother, Florence Parkinson, 1986 while staying with her on West 96th Street on the upper west side. WEST who lived an apartment with his mother a train ride down on West 72nd street, inspired Jansen to paint, and he cites their meeting as his first major art inspiration to take action. 
WEST and Marcus Jansen reunion in Bronx, New York at The Bronx Museum of the Arts
Marcus Jansen 1987 in Amsterdam Netherlands
Gravitating toward the instinctive impulse versus what Jansen sees as regimented academics, he completed high school, and at the request of his father, attended the Berufsfachschule, in Monenchengladbach, for one year, where he studied graphic art and Interior decoration (Gestaltung). Exposure to photography, design, technical drawing, paint and color gave Jansen an understanding of the basic structure of the arts.
He became bored and left, but like Willem de Kooning, Jansen began an apprenticeship as a commercial house painter and interior decorator, where he was introduced to the oil enamel paints that remain his medium of choice. Jansen completed his training and spent time between Maastricht, Netherlands, and Germany. He met Daisy Dee, former host of the German VIVA TV station Club Rotation in 1987 at a nightclub called the Soul Center. She became his biggest supporter and started to give him commissions. Traveling throughout Europe, he was further exposed to more art and culture including a first trip to the Louvre in Paris.. 
Marcus Jansen with his Platoon during Bootcamp, at Fort Leonardwood, MO.1990
Desert Storm, - PLDC Fort Campbell, Kentucky - AIT Fort Lee, Virginia
1989-1996
With the graffiti movement dying down in both New York and Europe, it thinking he could make a living or competing with many admired, Jansen enlisted in the U.S. Armed Forces in 1989 and was immediately deployed with his unit at Fort Bragg, N.C., to Operation Desert Storm in August 1990. He returned in April 1991 among the last units to return and was stationed, among other areas, in “Dragon City”, Dharan, close to a devastating missile attack. On February 25, 1991, he witnessed the explosion from his guard duty tower and was flown by helicopter to the frontline battlefield toward the end of his tour, where he saw the devastation left by allied forces. Returning from that tour, Jansen had more questions than answers, later creating a series titled “Aerial Views” inspired by this event as the artist explored topics such as increasing surveillance later in his career. He trained at Fort Bragg, home of the Airborne and Special Forces operations for another two years before being deployed to the demilitarized zone in Korea for a year, where he was introduced to an large aerial drone for the fist time that left an impression on him. After returning to the U.S. from his assignment in Korea, he underwent art therapy treatment at Walter Reed Hospital, in Maryland, for PTSD while stationed in Maryland with a Military Intelligence Battalion for three years where Jansen frequently stayed in New York on weekends selling street wear clothing and mix tapes to make extra money. His artwork got the counselor's attention during art therapy classes, inspiring Jansen to think about painting again. He was stationed in Germany for his last duty assignment with the 1st Infantry Division in Vilseck, Bavaria, and moved in with girlfriend, an economics major from RWTH Aachen, originally from Greifswald, in former East Germany. 
SGT Jansen Vilseck, Germany U.S. Army Barracks with first art works in 1997 before his discharge,
Marcus Jansen / MEPS tag.
1997-2003
Jansen married Michaela and she became his biggest supporter during the first part of his career, encouraging him to paint in a more urban style after his discharge. Jansen became more critical of U.S. foreign interventions and attitudes regarding U. S. foreign policy and undeclared military interventions, and was discharged honorably in 1997. His own art career began in his Vilseck Germany Army barracks and then Aachen, Germany, the same year, arranging a debut exhibition at Aula Carolina. For the first time since his discharge, he is noted by the newspaper AachenerZeitung. He gave himself the name MEPS in 1996, for Marc's Essential Painting Skills and used it as his synonym, inspired be the Army MEPS station and being attracted to the letters. Jansen approached Dr. Annette Lagler, director at the Ludwig Forum Museum for International Art, for guidance, while living blocks away from the museum. He shared photos of work from 1997 and she gave the young artist helpful advice. 
Daisy Dee with Kanye West
Marcus Jansen with European Music icon Daisy Dee in Roermond Netherlands, 1994 after returning from South Korea,
Jansen’s longtime friend Daisy Dee who he met when Daisy was only sixteen, commissioned Jansen for two works that were later sold to LL Cool J and Babs, cofounder of FUBU clothing and manager of FUBU Europe after his military discharge in 1997.
Jansen decided to return to New York City to test his work with a larger international audience while having difficulty holding other jobs due to his PTSD. He hopped between the Bronx, Queens and Manhattan, selling his work on streetcorners, often making one- or two-hour commutes to set up where he started creating gritty urban sceneries reflecting on issues of poverty responding to his many years of observed paradox’s between places, His painting “subway82”, which became his first printed work to make money fast, was chosen in a NYC Russel Simmons art competition in the semifinal round to show at the Copacabana night club under the name MEPS MILLENNIUM, where he met one of the people he admired growing up “Crazy Legs” from the infamous Rock Steady Crew, who approached and congratulated Jansen on the win after seeing Subway 82. Harlem Deli, 30x40" on board by Marcus Jansen the first urban themed work by Jansen after his Military Discharge painted in 1997, Hollywood Actor John Ortiz collection.
Jansen set up on the street corner of Prince Street and Broadway with artist friend Carlos Ramsey to sell their works and became part of the group of artists often referred to as “PrinceStreetKings” that displayed their art on the streets of SOHO while being a bartender on weekends at the Carltun in Long Island being taught how to mix drinks by his God Sister Elissa Panoune in Queens. He revisited his old mentor, WEST Rubinstein, in New York, who was running the successful PNB Nation clothing line from lower Manhattan and encouraged Jansen to continue his art.
Hollywood actor John Ortiz purchased Jansen's “Harlem Deli” (signed MEPS), after stopping by while filming a movie in Manhattan. During this period. Jansen also sold his highest-priced street painting at the time for $750 to New York art dealer Monya Rowe before she became a dealer. In the same year that Jansen's studio co-founder and best friend for many years in the armed forces, Sgt. Robert Suarez, dies in a military accident in Heidelberg, while Jansen is in SOHO, the artists continues to paint to escape the loss. 
1997,Subway, 82, one of the first urban works on cardboard as seen in the Source Magazine in 2001.
2006, urban works and first of the Phone Infiltration series, later continued in 2018
Marcus Jansen on his corner of Prince Street and Broadway, SOHO, New York City 1999.
Prioritizing family life to, Jansen left the streets of New York against his artist friends' advice and moved to Atlanta in August 2001 with his then-wife Michaela. One month later, the September 11 attack took place in New York, where many of his “PrinceStreetKings” friends witnessed the event and left the city, never to return.
Richard Beavers, an urban art enthusiast and cultural game-changer in Bed Stuy Brooklyn, saw Jansen’s gritty urban work in an ad in The Source magazine a year later. An MTV employee at the time who Jansen encourages to open an art gallery, Beavers became Jansen's first U.S. collector and later his art main New York art dealer, and appeared in Jansen’s first film. Beavers started selling Jansen’s work internationally, with a strong focus on the New York market, placing works with NBA New York Knicks all-star Carmelo Anthony and noted collector Peggy Cooper-Cafritz from his gallery on Marcus Garvey Boulevard.
Concerned by a new Iraq war looming and the prospects of US soldiers being sent to repeat potential atrocities against a country not connected to the event, Jansen started shifted course from purely urban critical commentary, to exploring the human condition in the post-911 era in his work by drawing upon his own experiences and parallels between historic and contemporary worlds for a 21st century response in painting using the urban landscape as the stage while many claims were being made that “painting was dead.”
In 2003, the Jansen's had a first born son and received his biggest commission to date from the Ford Motor Company, in Dearborn, Detroit where Filmmaker Spike Lee was invited and given Jans's first book and a signed print. He moved to Fort Myers, Florida with his wife Michaela and first son, where he continued working, unknowingly not far from 20th-century master Robert Rauschenberg's residence on Captiva and Sanibel Island. 
Robert Rauschenberg photo taken by Marcus Jansen the day the two met and showed at the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery in a group show in support of Arts for Act in Fort Myers,
Jansen starts painting his first fractured faceless portrait "Ratrace" with an emphasis on human anonymity and power in the year 2000 which later initiates a series to follow in 2011.
Art Historian Jerome A. Donson American Museum Director and Curator of the American Vanguard Exhibitions, 1961 Action Painters.and Jansen at the Alliance for the Arts in Fort Myers Florida 2004.
2004-2009
In 2004, Jansen met art historian Jerome A. Donson. The former director of the famous American Vanguard Exhibitions 1961, which traveled to Europe and included Rauschenberg, Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and others, discovered Jansen's work. Donson wrote about the artist in the artist's first French catalog, Marcus Antonius Jansen: Modern Urban Expressionism. The same year, Jansen had an opportunity to show with Robert Rauschenberg in support of a local Arts for Act charity at the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery in 2004 almost immediately after arriving in Florida, and was introduced by Grammy Award-winning musician Kat Epple after Rauschenberg viewed Jansen’s painting and complimented his work. In 2007, Jansen was included to the St. Petersburg/Russia - Central Exhibition Hall, Manege 8th. International Biennale of Contemporary Art, “Dialogues” attending his first international biennale and the work “The Swallows Symbol” was placed into the Moscow Museum of Modern Art MMOMA permanent collection which became Jansens first oversees museum collection. Jansen's first Institutional solo show was at the Yeiser Art Center in Kentucky where he showed urban landscape and started painting in large for the first time in 2008 landing his work titled “Foreclosure” on the cover of The Internatioal Review of African American Art Volume 22. 
Yeiser Art Center, solo show, first institutional exhibition of urban works in Paducah, Kentucky, 2007.
2008, Foreclosure, 108x72"
2009, Cyber Surveillance on wasteland - First large Surveillance work
Jansen started exploring surveillance as a subject in 2009, before discussion with Edward Snowden became mainstream news and shortly after his return trip from London in 2008 for his show Urban Expressionism, with Stolen Space Gallery. At the time London was ranked the leading surveillance state in the world and Jansen painted out of concern and interest in the ever-growing idea of being watched.
2008, Doghouse
Jansen shifts from exterior to interior sceneries in 2008, usually abandoned areas |
Marcus Jansen Manufactured Landscapes, 108x72" 2009.
Donson wrote: "Marcus is the innovator of Modern Expressionism. What initiated it for him was the graffiti on the sides of subway trains when he traveled from the Bronx to Manhattan to sell his work on the street. This is somewhat reminiscent of Jackson Pollock learning to kneel with the Hopi Indians and throw sand to make sand pictures. That innovation may have been the beginning of Abstract Expressionism.
"As we spoke to the artist, Marcus Antonius Jansen, I told him I believed he was the originator of a new movement which I called 'Urban Expressionism' and that I believed that there will be many followers in this new style. But there will only be one Marcus Jansen." Jansen was commissioned for a political satire as part of the Warner Brothers 80th anniversary. He was also selected as one of only nine other Americans for the 12th International Print & Drawing Biennial in Taiwan at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art, with juror David Kiehl, from the Whitney Museum of Art, in 2007. the Museum includes the award winning print in it’s permanent collection titled, “Urban Times,” Jansen’s first showing in Asia. 
E Pluribus Unum, 48x60" oil enamel mixed media on canvas 2008. Warner Brother Commission.
He began painting large-scale works in the post-9/11 era, and was alarmed by the emerging surveillance state in 2008 and 2009. The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, whose founder, Crosby Kemper, bought three works for his collection and became the first US Museum to purchase Jansen’s work.
Responding to his wife being diagnosed with Cancer at the young age of 34 that led to a two year struggle of survival, Jansen addressed politics, social issues and has a particular focus on GMO food production, the patenting of pig DNA and had a painting titled Patented Pigs, included in the New Britain Museum of American Art permanent collection, as well. Animals with target series
2008 - 2009 work
2011, Absolut JANSEN, Absolut Blank Campaign Bottle
Jansens two sons left to the artist to raise alone after their diseased mother in 2011
2010-2015
He was approached and commissioned by Absolut Vodka in 2011, becoming part of the next generation in the tradition of popular of Absolut artists following in the footsteps of Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst and Keith Haring. Chief curator at the Orange County Museum of Art Dan Cameron selected “Creeping Obstacles In Kansas” for the cover of New American Paintings Volume 94. During the process of the 2011 Absolut commission, Jansen was asked to be the poster child for the campaign and was asked to fly to Portugal to shoot the commercial. Due to his wife’s condition, Jansen declined and stayed with his wife and longtime supporter who died shortly after enduring a two-year struggle, with Jansen as sole caretaker leaving Jansen with two sons to raise on his own. Emotionally and financially bereft, he restarted his art career from scratch. In response to his wife’s death, Jansen opened a large, 7,000-square-foot studio known as UNIT A, first on Evans Avenue and then on Martin Luther King Boulevard, in the what used to be a segregated area of Fort Myers Florida that has served as a catalyst for the city's art community and bringing in an international clientele ever since to it recently being named “Gardners Park.” 2011 first created Faceless portraits
2012 first created Faceless portraits
Jansen's newly distorted portraits which he then titled “Faceless” challenged classical portrait painting and norms and focused on emotion and character of the subjects rather than defined faces often in history used as power structures. Some portraits distorted representing people of power and some highlighting ordinary people forgotten or overlooked.
The paintings were painted in 2011 and first released in 2012. Works from that series were included by the controversial curator Marat Guelman in Russia at the PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art “Anonymous” biennale for the first time in 2012 and are since in the museums permanent collection. “Anonymity and its consequences, both good and bad, are at the forefront of Anonymous, an exhibit that opened up just last Friday at the Perm Museum of Contemporary Art (PERMM) in Perm, Russia. Florida artist Marcus Jansen, who is considered by many to be the 21st century’s response to artists like Jackson Pollock and Robert Rauschenberg, will be representing the United States with a series of paintings called “Faceless.” - Chaos Magazine, 2012 In 2013, Jansen was named a winner of the Arte Laguna Biennale Prize, in Venice, where he was asked to stage a solo exhibition in Italy for the first time. The show was publicized by Rolling Stone, Arte, XL Repubblica, and ESPOARTE with the title, "A New Star is born?" Naples, Florida's Baker Museum included Jansen in their annual exhibition (Florida Contemporary) in 2014. Aerial Views
The Overseer, 2011
The same year, Jansen departed from his socially charged landscapes and experiments with faceless portraits and an Aerial Views series, showing works that were inspired by unused table tops he used as paint pallets to make three-dimensional landscape works of art, inspired by his Gulf War Helicopter surveillance view from the sky on to the battlefield in 1991.
2015, (first large work in the Colonialist series) - (Later 2021 expanding to recent works.)
David and Goliath 2020.
The worlds leading London urban art dealer, Steve Lazarides, BANKSY’s first agent, invited Jansen for his first solo show titled, “Whistleblower” with the Gallery and became his UK representative. The press named Jansen “Cartographer of Conflict.” Click here
The Faceless series over the years morphed into what appeared to be radical mask wearing or faceless colonialist portraits in 2015 and a continues deconstructing of classical, fixed painting, history perceptions and previously held social hierarchy narratives while Juxtapozing gestures of falling colonialism, capitalist and supremacy gestures inspired by his father's highly critical History Thesis titled: "The War of Independance or the American Revolution that was no Revolution: Another look at the reasons,” which was aced among his professors. Sabrina Jansen, an accomplished musician and pianist, became Jansen's partner and primary photographer of the artist in his studios. Her most recognizable photos appeared on the cover of the Skira Editore book Marcus Jansen DECADE, in which the Faceless series is published for the first time internationally in Milan, Italy as well as shown at the La Triennale Di Milano Museum in Jansen's first solo museum exhibition. 2016-2018
Sotheby’s hosted it’s annual 2016, take home a Nude auction Benefiting New York Academy of Art which became Jansen’s first official U.S. international auction selling the work titled, “PTSD.” Jansen’s father and mentor Hans Jansen, perhaps his strongest academic and change of life influences, died four months before Jansen’s first solo museum exhibition in Europe at La Triennale di Milano Museum. The exhibition, “DECADE—paintings from the last ten years,” wound up dominating Italian headlines and critics picked it as one of the top 10 shows to see in Italy next to Basquiat, Monet and others. Jansen's "Faceless professor," appeared on the cover of Art Profil, Germany. The exhibition was inaugurated by art historian Dr. Elmar Zorn and curated by Dr. Brooke Lynn McGowan, and Co-curated by Italian curator RossellaFarinotti. Marcus Jansen DECADE, a 10-year survey of works, was released worldwide and the first International film was produced by Emmy-winning filmmaker and director John Scoular, who presented Jansen as the subject of the film Examine and Report, to be later shown at the Fort Myers Film Festival, winning the title of Best Local Film and for it’s New York premiere at the East Hampton TV Festival where it won “best short film documentary” awarded by former editor of Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine, Robert Couri Hay. It highlights the influences that made Jansen's work what it is today; featuring art dealer Steve Lazarides, Robert Rauschenberg's art fabricator Lawrence Voytek, art historian Dr. Brooke Lynn Mcgowan and major Jansen collector Dieter Rampl, chairman of the Hypo-KunsthalleMunich, Noah Becker, founder of Whitehotmagazine, NY, WEST Rubenstein and others. 
Marcus Jansen Film Poster Examine and Report 2016.
Works on Paper a departure to more abstract landscapes with silhouettes. 9x12" on paper. 2016
The Rescue, 9x12" on paper 2016.
2018, Plot series
German art book publisher Hirmer Verlag Munich published Jansen's first International German/English language book for his German museum tour in 2017 titled Marcus Jansen Aftermath, including commentary by art critic Professor Dr. Manfred Schneckenburger; two-time Documenta Kassel curator, who referred to Jansen as “one of the most important American painters of his generation”; Professor Dr. Dieter Ronte, former director of the Kunstmuseum Bonn and Vienna; art critic Gottfried Knapp, from the Suddeutsche Zeitung; and art curator Dr. Elmar Zorn. Dr. Birgit Loffler, director of Das Maximum Museum in Traunstein, Germany, introduced Jansen’s work at the Traunstein Klosterkirche, where Jansen showed a series of retrospective works in its last exhibition while also for the first time publishing his (works on paper). The opening show took place at Heitsch Galerie in Munich home of “Der Blaue Reiter” (Blue Rider) the important German Expressionism group, founded in Munich in 1911. Jansen later is represented by Galerie Kellermann in NRW, Düsseldorf Germany, not far from Jansen’s former place of residency in Moenchengladbach who attends the German art fair Art Karlsruhe and introduces Jansen’s work at the for the first time in Germany.
Jansen later that same year created a series of various subjects such as interiors titled, (Bedrooms), Typewriters titled, (Plots) commenting on media and false information as well as an (Infiltrated Phones) series that became a continuation of his surveillance series in which he painted an old 1920's phone in 2006. Later in the series drawing parallels to the increasing surveillance America around that time and today and again after his first trip as an adult to London, the surveillance capitol of the world with works like Cyber Surveillance on wasteland and expanding the phone series. The bedrooms started exploring human isolation and interiors instead of his typical exteriors two years before the COVID pandemic broke out. 
2020, Wire Tappimg
2018, Phone Infiltration series.
2018, Bedroom Series with 2019 Asylum Series
Jansen exhibited 10 large works as a featured artist at the Kallmann Museum Ismaning by Munich in 2017 and a full mid-career retrospective at the Zitadelle Museum, in Berlin, both becoming the first German museums to celebrate Jansen’s work just before his 50th birthday making both his first solo museum show in Germany in 2018.
Robert Casterline and Jordan Goodman, owners of CasterlineGoodman Gallery, showed Jansen in a solo exhibition, “Now And Then” in Aspen during the 2018 ArtCrush in collaboration with the Aspen Museum of Art, where noted ArtNEWS top 200 collectors Amy and John Phelan purchased his work for their private collection at auction. In the U.S., Jansen’s permanent collection works were first highlighted in his inaugural U.S. museum feature, “Deconstructing Marcus Jansen,” at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, curated by Jade Powers along side Willem DeKooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Romare Bearden and others. Click here 
2018, Museum Spotlight: Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Deconstructing Marcus Jansen
Jansen sets up his studio Motthaven / Port Morris in the South Bronx not far from his native residence in Soundview. Photo: with Brooklyn based dealer Richard Beavers.
2019-2020
Jansen opened a permanent studio in the Port Morris/Motthavenneighborhood of his native Bronx, officially announced formation of the Marcus Jansen Foundation Fund to help veterans and low-income children in the arts and was commissioned by Pussy Cat Doll lead singer Nicole Scherzinger in Los Angeles for a private commission work. The University of Michigan Museum of Art acquired a large Jansen painting, “Hide Out" for its permanent collection. Jansen had his New York film premiere at the East Hampton TV Festival with Marcus Jansen Examine and Report, winning an award for Best Art TV Pilot Documentary, and was featured in an artist profile in The Epoch Times. In 2019, Jansen painted a series titled, “Behind Walls” in response to the physical and psychological walls and waters rising moved by his late wife who grew up behind the East German wall herself before the removal of it in 1989. He was commissioned by Hollywood Singer Nicole Scherzinger to do a large commission work that was highlighted on Architectual Digest. Jansen showed at two Asian art fairs for the first time, Art021, in China, and Teipai Dangdai, in Taiwan, with his then new representatives and leading urban art dealer in Paris, Galerie DAnYSZ with dealer Magda Danyz in Paris, while preparing for his first U.S. solo museum show at the Rollins Museum of Art in 2020 immediately followed by a survey at the Baker Museum in 2021. 
Marcus Jansen and Nicole Scherzinger 2019 at his SW Florida studios
Monument Wars, #2
Jansen’s “Monument Wars” series emerged as his first paintings in response to the 2020 monument removal events in the United States during the COVID 19 outbreak, while continuing a dialogue of colonialism at large not just limited to confederate statues and his first distorted power figures appeared on horses.
Jansen was approached by Curator Dr. Gisela Carbonell to show at the Rollins Museum of Art, for his first U.S. solo exhibition in 2020. His work “Plot #2” from the series “Plots” was placed in the permanent collection at The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, Rollins Museum of Art which served as a catalyst to broaden Jansen’s international market after . French Art dealer Almine Rech announced her international representation alongside Richard Beavers Gallery in New York in December 2020 and invited Jansen to a solo show in Paris in early 2021 and in London in early 2022 where both shows sold out. 
Marcus Jansen Power Structures, Almine Rech Paris, 2021 first display of Colonialist Faceless figures solo display in Paris.
2019, Behind Walls series.
2021-2022
Jansen is awarded a Men & Woman of the Year award by Gulfshore Life magazine and was highlighted in the New York Times twice in one year, one article titled: “A Painting Depicting the Precarity of a Single Figure, and of Us All” after his Rollins Museum of Art show and the New York Times calling his show “a magisterial presentation” while showing with Richard Beavers Gallery at Future Fair in New York. ”The Bronx Museum of Arts became the first New York City museum to acquire a Jansen’s work into its permanent collection and Almine Rech’s London show “Victims and Victors,” is noted in the Guardian, UK as “Exhibition of the week” and by FAD Magazine as “Top 5 exhibitions” to see in Mayfair and Fitzrovia.” Jansen had his first auction appearance at Christie’s auction house in New York in 2022 for a charity auction supporting the “The Bronx Museum of the Arts.” Presented by Julian Ehrlich specialist Head of Sale, Post-War to Present painting, “MMXX” sold for $107,100 after out performing the set estimate of $60,000 - $80,000. Christie’s reported a new record set for the artist. click here 
Marcus Jansen with Robert Rauschenberg's long time Art Producer Lawrence Voytek in SW Florida
Jansen moved his studio location and Lawrence Voytek, Rauschenberg's longtime art fabricator guided Jansen in designing his new studio in SW Florida and continues to assist Jansen with selected projects after appearing in the Art documentary Marcus Jansen Examine and Report in 2016.
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