1968-1976
Marcus Jansen's 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 influences. Like most kids, he grew up watching Superman and Spider-Man cartoons in the morning, as well as his favorite show, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Jansen came from a middle-class working family and 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 the news, 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. 
Bronx, New York, 1971
Marcus Jansen at PS: 156 in Laurelton, Queens 1974, where he painted a lion that showed at the Lever House in Manhattan at age six.
The family 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.
Queens, NY, Jansen with Neighbor, Brother and Mother, New York 1974.
1976-1979
Jansen left New York City in a post-segregation era wheninterracial marriages had just became legalized and shortly before the explosion of the punk rock and hip hop art scene. He was transplanted from the Big Apple to Moenchengladbach, Germany, his father's birthplace, and placed in a German-speaking school, where he faced linguistic challenges and severe racism as the only child of color in the school, but excelled in art and sports more than academic subjects. 
Marcus Jansen (Left) Moenchengladbach Germany 1978, Caribbean Club.
Marcus Jansen / MEPS tag.
1980-1985
Jansen visited New York City during the important 1980s cultural art movement over the summers and returned in 1982while 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, impressed by the art that was altering the urban landscape in New York and Europe. The 14-year-old Jansen encountered a book about Robert Rauschenberg at a train station, 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 new 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.” 
Marcus Jansen at the Bronx Museum of the Arts 2019 with WEST Rubinstein.
1986-1988
Jansen met Manhattan-based graffiti writer WEST Rubinstein, aka WESTONE, 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, in Manhattan in 1986 while staying on West 96th Street on the upper west side. WEST inspired Jansen to paint, and he cites their meeting as his first major art inspiration. 
Marcus Jansen 1987 in Amsterdam Netherlands with Marian Shelton and TRAZONER.
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 (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, 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. She became his biggest supporter and started to give him commissions. Traveling throughout Europe, he was further exposed to more art and culture. 
Marcus Jansen at Bootcamp Fort Leonardwood, with battle buddy.
1989-1996
Jansen enlisted in the U.S. Armed Forces in 1989 and was immediately deployed to Operation Desert Storm in August 1990. He returned in April 1991 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 exploredtopics such as increasing surveillance. He was also deployed to the demilitarized zone in Korea for a year, where he was introduced to an large aerial drone that left an impression on him. After returning from active duty, he underwent art therapy treatment at Walter Reed Hospital, in Maryland, for PTSD. 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 Michaela Hansen, an economics major from RWTH Aachen, originally from Greifswald, in former East Germany. 
The late Michaela Jansen with Jansen sons in Fort Myers Florida 2009.
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 a year of light duty, he was becoming more critical of U.S. interventions and attitudes regarding 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. Jansen approached Dr. Annette Lagler, director at the Ludwig Forum 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. 
Marcus Jansen with Daisy Dee in Roermond Netherlands, 1994.
Jansen’s longtime friend Daisy Dee commissioned Jansen for two works that were later sold to LL Cool J and Babs, cofounder of FUBU clothing and manager of FUBU Europe. 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.
Jansen decided to leave Aachen and return to his roots in New York City to test his work with a larger international audience while having difficulty holding other jobs. He hopped between the Bronx, Queens and Manhattan, selling his work on streetcorners, often making one- or two-hour commutes to set up. 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 “Crazy Legs” from the infamous Rock Steady Crew, who admired his work and congratulated Jansen. 
Harlem Deli, 30x40" on board by Marcus Jansen the first urban themed work by Jansen after his Military Discharge painted in 1997,
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 referred to as “PrinceStreetKings” that displayed their art on the streets of SOHO.
Hollywood actor John Ortiz purchased Jansen's “Harlem Deli” (signed MEPS), while filming a movie in Manhattan. During this period. Jansen also sold his highest-priced street painting to date for $750 to New York art dealer Monya Rowe. 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. 
Subway 82, 30x40inch by Marcus Jansen 1997 the second urban themed work ever created by Jansen painted in 1997 as seen on Prince Street and Broadway in New York City winning the O.R.B. E Russel Simmons Competition held in New York in 1999. The Painting pays homage to his time on the subway in 1982 in New York and the Rock Steady Crew (RSC).
Marcus Jansen on his corner of Prince Street and Broadway, SOHO, New York City 1999.
Marcus Jansen with art dealer Richard Beavers in Bed Stuy Brooklyn, New York
Prioritizing family life, Jansen left the streets of New York against his 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 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 dealer, and appeared in Jansen’s first film. Beavers started selling Jansen’s work nationally, but strongly focused 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. Jansen started shifted course, 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 using the urban landscape as the stage. In 2003, Jansen received his biggest commission to date from the Ford Motor Company, in Detroit. He moved to 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 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,
2004-2009
Jansen had an opportunity to show with 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. |
Jerome A. Donson, American Museum Director and Curator of the American Vanguard Exhibitions, 1961 Action Painters.
Art Historian Jerome A. Donson and Jansen at the Alliance for the Arts in Fort Myers Florida 2004.
The same year, 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 Jansen: Modern Urban Expressionism.
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, with juror David Kiehl, from the Whitney Museum of Art, in 2007. 
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. Jansen addressed politics, social issues, the patenting of pig DNA and had a painting included in the New Britain Museum of American Art permanent collection, as well as the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, whose founder, Crosby Kemper, bought three works for his collection. Robert Casterline, co-owner of the Casterline Goodman Gallery, became Jansen’s first international dealer and agent.
Jansen studios on Martin Luther King Blvd, Fort Myers Florida.
2010-2015
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 ever since. He was commissioned by Absolut Vodka, 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. The same year, Jansen departed from his socially charged landscapes and experiments with faceless portraits. 
Absolut Jansen bottle, (Right) with Absolut Blank campaign 2012.
In 2011, Jansen’s wife and longtime supporter died after a two-year struggle with cancer, leaving Jansen with two sons to raise on his own. Emotionally and financially bereft, he restarted his art career from scratch. 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, andESPOARTE with the title, "A New Star is born?" Naples, Florida's Baker Museum included Jansen in their annual exhibition (Florida Contemporary) in 2014.
2006, Manneken Pis, by Marcus Jansen
RollingStone write up for first Museum Solo Exhibition in Milan Italy.
Sabrina Jansen at Sothbey's, New York.
Sabrina Jansen, a musician and pianist, became Jansen's partner and primary photographer of the artist in his studios. Her most recognizable photos appeared in the Skira Editore book Marcus Jansen DECADE. His London dealer, Steve Lazarides, BANKSY’s first agent, invited Jansen for his first solo show with the Whistleblower Gallery and became his UK representative.
Marcus Jansen DECADE first international publication by Skira Editore, Milan, Italy 2016
Marcus Jansen age six in Queens with father Hans Jansen.
2016-2018
Jansen’s father and mentor Hans Jansen, perhaps his strongest academic influence, 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,” dominated Italian headlines and critics picked it as one of the top 10 shows to see in Italy next to Basquiat, Monet and others. The exhibition was inaugurated by art historian Dr. Elmar Zorn and curated by Dr. Brooke Lynn McGowan and RossellaFarinotti. Marcus Jansen DECADE, a 10-year retrospective of works, is released worldwide and the first International film is 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. 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. 
Art Historian Brooke Lynn Mcgowan with Marcus Jansen, Berlin Germany 2018 during Museum tour.
Marcus Jansen with Prof Dr, Dieter Ronte, Former Museum Director at the Kunst Museum Bonn at Jansens Museum show at Zitadelle Berlin 2018.
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.
Marcus Jansen at Kalmman Museum, Ismaning, Germany for his European Museum tour.
Jansen exhibited 10 large works as a featured artist at the Kallmann Museum Ismaning 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.
Robert Casterline and Jordan Goodman, owners of CasterlineGoodman Gallery, showed Jansen in a solo exhibition, “Now And Then” in Aspen during the 2018 ArtCrush at the Aspen Museum of Art, where noted collectors Amy and John Phelan purchased his work for their private collection. Jansen’s permanent collection works were highlighted in his inaugural U.S. museum feature, “Deconstructing Marcus Jansen,” at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, curated by Jade Powers. Jansen was approached by Curator Dr. Gisela Carbonellto show at the Cornell Fine Arts Museum for his first U.S. solo exhibition in 2020 while setting up his new studio in downtown Fort Myers. 
Marcus Jansen Film Poster Examine and Report 2016.
Marcus Jansen's Bronx, NY studios 2019.
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. 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. Jansen showed at two Asian art fairs, Art021, in China, and Teipai Dangdai, in Taiwan, with Galerie DAnYSZ while preparing for his first U.S. solo museum show at the Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College in 2020 and survey at the Baker Museum in 2021. His work “Plot #2” was placed in the permanent collection at The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, Rollins Museum of Art. French Art dealer Almine Rech announced global representation of the artist in December 2020 and invited Jansen to a solo show in Paris in 2021 and in London in 2022. 
Marcus Jansen Power Structures, Almine Rech Paris, 2021.
2021-2022
Jansen is awarded a Men & Woman of the Year award by Gulfshore Life magazine. Jansen was highlighted in the New York Times twice in a year, A Painting Depicting the Precarity of a Single Figure, and of Us All, while The Bronx Museum of Arts became the first New York City museum to acquire a Jansen’s work into its permanent collection. 
Marcus Jansen with Robert Rauschenberg's long time Art Producer Lawrence Voytek in SW Florida at Jansen’s Studio HQ.
Lawrence Voytek, Rauschenberg's longtime art fabricator guides Jansen in designing his new studio in SW Florida and works with Jansen on projects after appearing in the Art documentary Marcus Jansen Examine and Report in 2016.
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