1968-1976
Marcus Jansen was born 1968 in New York City while residing with his family in the Bronx. He resided in the city during the emergence of economic decline and the emergence of a graffiti subculture on trains and walls that permanently changed the city’s visual environment in those early years. Jansen, was first raised by his Grandparents and mother, a practicing nurse from Jamaica, later joined by a German born father, a businessman and historian from Europe. The family, later 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 male lion on paper at the Lever House, in Manhattan. This event introduced Jansen to the world of public art exhibitions.
1976-1979
Jansen left New York City shortly before the explosion of the punk rock and hip hop art scene, and was transplanted from the Big Apple to Moenchengladbach, Germany, his father's birthplace, and placed in a German-speaking school. He faced linguistic challenges and severe racism as the only child of color in the school and town, but excelled in art and sports more than academic subjects.
1980-1985
Jansen revisited his native New York during the important 80s cultural art movement over the summers and returned in 1982. A rebellious graffiti art movement was dominatingthe city and served as Jansen’s first major influence. He became involved in art forms of the subculture and quickly adopted graffiti and dancing as a vehicle of communication, at the same fascinated with how art wasaltering the urban landscape. A 14-year-old Jansen encountered a book about Robert Rauschenberg in a Moenchengladbach, Germany, 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. They exuded a strong urban, inner city feel that he had not yet encountered.
Growing up, Jansen experienced challenges with viewers understanding his paradoxical cultural influences between Germany and New York and sought to find other means of bridging social, cultural and economic class differences in his art. Politics, current events and world history were at the forefront of discussions initiated by his historian father during much of Jansen’s upbringing.
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, creating a bridge of communication. 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 meets 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. WEST inspired Jansen to paint, and Jansen cites their meeting as his first major art inspiration.
Gravitating toward the instinctive impulse versus what Jansen sees as regimented academics, he completedhigh 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 ofthe 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 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 Jansen’s biggest supporter and started to give him commissions. Traveling throughout Europe, he was exposed to more art and culture.
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 many other areas, in “Dragon City”, Dharan, close to a devastating missile attack. On February 25, 1991, hewitnessed 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. He was deployed to the demilitarized zone in Korea for a year and after returning, underwent art therapy treatment at Walter Reed Hospital, in Maryland. His artwork got the counselor's attention during art therapy classes, inspiring Jansen to think aboutpainting again. Jansen was stationed in Germany for his last duty assignment with the 1st Infantry Division in Vilseck, Bavaria. He moved in with girlfriend Michaela Hansen, an economics major from RWTH Aachen, originally from Greifswald, in former East Germany.
1997-2003
Jansen married Michaela and she is his biggest supporter during the first part of his career while he is becoming more critical of U.S. interventions and attitudes regarding foreign policies and undeclared military interventions. He was discharged honorably in 1997 with the rank of sergeant just after seeing Julian Schnabel’s 1996 film Basquiat. His own art career began in Aachen the same year, arranging a debut exhibition at Aula Carolina. For the first time since his discharge, he is noted by the Aachener Zeitung. Jansen approached Dr. Annette Lagler, director at the Ludwig Forum for International Art, for guidance, while living only blocks away from the museum. He shared photos of work from 1997 and she gave helpful advice to the young artist.
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 encouragedJansen to continue his art.
Jansen decided to leave Aachen and return to New York City to test his work with a larger international audience while having difficulty holding other jobs. He hoppedbetween the Bronx, Queens and Manhattan, staying with relatives while selling his work on street corners. His painting “subway82” was chosen in a NYC Russel Simmons art competition in the semifinal round to show at the Copacabana night club, where he met “Crazy Legs” from the infamous Rock Steady Crew, who admired his work.
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” who displayed their art on the streets of SOHO. It is then that one of his first buyers, Hollywood actor John Ortiz, purchased “Harlem Deli” (30X 40) while filming a movie with Julian Schnabel in Manhattan. He also sold his highest-priced street painting to date for $750 to New York art dealer Monya Rowe.
Considering family life first, Jansen left the streets of New York and moved to Atlanta in August 2001 with Michaela. Two months later, the September 11 attack took place in New York, where many of his “princestreetkings” friends witnessed the event and left the city. Urban art enthusiast and cultural game-changer in Bed Stuy Brooklyn, Richard Beavers, saw Jansen’s work in an ad in The Source magazine. 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 startedselling Jansen’s work nationally, but focused on the Brooklyn community, placing works with NBA New York Knicks all-star Carmelo Anthony and noted collector Peggy Cooper-Cafritz from his gallery on Marcus Garvey Blvd..
Jansen started exploring the human condition in the post-911 era in his work, 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 where the 20th-century master Robert Rauschenberg resides on Captiva island.
2004-2009
Jansen had the 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 to him by Grammy-winning musician Kat Epple after Rauschenberg viewedJansen’s painting and complimented his work. The same year, Jansen met art historian Jerome A. Donson. The former director of the famous American Vanguard Exhibitions 1961 that traveled to Europe and included Rauschenberg, Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and others, discovered Jansen's work. Donsonwrote about the artist in Jansen's first French catalog, Marcus Jansen Modern Urban Expressionism, in which he called Jansen the “innovator of Modern Expressionism” and compared it with the Ash Can School.Jansen was commissioned for a politically critical satire as part of the Warner Brothers 80th anniversary. He wasselected for the 12th International Print & Drawing Biennial in Taiwan with juror David Kiehl, from the Whitney Museum of Art, shortly thereafter, as one of only nine other Americans in 2007.
He began painting large-scale works in the post9/11 era and was alarmed by the emerging surveillance state in 2008 and 2009. Jansen addressed politics, social issues, the patenting of pigs 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, becameJansen’s first international dealer and agent. Novotek CFO Mark Gyetvay, an avid art collector from Naples, Florida, whose keen eye is noted in the Financial Times, becameJansen's number one collector, acquiring the extraordinary work “Creeping Obstacles in Kansas”.
2010-2015
Jansen 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 selects “Creeping Obstacles In Kansas” for the cover of New American Paintings Volume 94. 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. The Baker Museum included Jansenin their annual exhibition (Florida Contemporary) in 2014.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 waspublicized by Rolling Stone, Arte, XL Repubblica, and ESPOARTE. Jansen’s painting “The Visitors" became Jansen’s first to ever be auctioned in Milan in 2014; hosted by renowned auctioneer Vittorio Sgarbi, curator of the Italian Pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale.
Sabrina Gruber, 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. Jansen’s London dealer Steve Lazarides, BANKSY’s first agent, invited Jansen for his first solo show with the Whistleblower Gallery and became Jansen’s UK representative.
2016-2018
Jansen’s father and mentor Hans Jansen, perhaps hisstrongest 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. A headline in EXPOART magazine read, “A New Star is born?” In a review by Italian art critic Igor Zanti. The exhibition is inaugurated by art historian Dr. Elmar Zorn and curated by Dr. Brooke Lynn McGowan and RossellaFarinotti.
Jansen's book Marcus Jansen DECADE is published by Skira Editore, in Milan. The 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 Whitehot magazine, NY, WEST Rubenstein and others.
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 Prof. Dr. Manfred Schneckenburger; two-time Documenta Kassel curator, who referred to Jansen as “one of the most important American painters of his generation”; Prof. 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.
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 Casterline Goodman 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 on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd in downtown Fort Myers which served as a catalyst to change the neighborhoods public image.
2019-2020
Jansen 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" (84 X 72) for its permanent collection. Jansen had his New York Film Premiere at the East Hampton TV Festival with Marcus Jansen Examine and Report, winning and award for Best Art TV Pilot Documentary, and was featured in an artist profile in The Epoch Times. He returned to his native Bronx New York and openeda second studio in the Port Morris/Motthaven neighborhood.
He 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 Naples, Florida, in 2021. His work “Plot #2” (48 x 60)” was placed in the permanent collection at The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art,Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College. French Art dealer Almine Rech invites Jansen to show solo in Paris in 2021 and in London in 2022. The gallery announcedglobal representation of the artist in December 2020.
2021-2022
After the first two Almine Rech sold-out solo shows in Paris and in London and his first Florida solo Museum show at the Rollins Museum of Art followed by the Baker Museum, six other shows curated by Almine Rech and Richard Beavers Gallery in Brooklyn all sell out. Jansen is highlighted in the New York Times for the second time in a year, while The Bronx Museum becomes the first New York City museum to acquire Jansen’s work into it’s permanent collection.
Marcus Jansen was born 1968 in New York City while residing with his family in the Bronx. He resided in the city during the emergence of economic decline and the emergence of a graffiti subculture on trains and walls that permanently changed the city’s visual environment in those early years. Jansen, was first raised by his Grandparents and mother, a practicing nurse from Jamaica, later joined by a German born father, a businessman and historian from Europe. The family, later 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 male lion on paper at the Lever House, in Manhattan. This event introduced Jansen to the world of public art exhibitions.
1976-1979
Jansen left New York City shortly before the explosion of the punk rock and hip hop art scene, and was transplanted from the Big Apple to Moenchengladbach, Germany, his father's birthplace, and placed in a German-speaking school. He faced linguistic challenges and severe racism as the only child of color in the school and town, but excelled in art and sports more than academic subjects.
1980-1985
Jansen revisited his native New York during the important 80s cultural art movement over the summers and returned in 1982. A rebellious graffiti art movement was dominatingthe city and served as Jansen’s first major influence. He became involved in art forms of the subculture and quickly adopted graffiti and dancing as a vehicle of communication, at the same fascinated with how art wasaltering the urban landscape. A 14-year-old Jansen encountered a book about Robert Rauschenberg in a Moenchengladbach, Germany, 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. They exuded a strong urban, inner city feel that he had not yet encountered.
Growing up, Jansen experienced challenges with viewers understanding his paradoxical cultural influences between Germany and New York and sought to find other means of bridging social, cultural and economic class differences in his art. Politics, current events and world history were at the forefront of discussions initiated by his historian father during much of Jansen’s upbringing.
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, creating a bridge of communication. 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 meets 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. WEST inspired Jansen to paint, and Jansen cites their meeting as his first major art inspiration.
Gravitating toward the instinctive impulse versus what Jansen sees as regimented academics, he completedhigh 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 ofthe 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 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 Jansen’s biggest supporter and started to give him commissions. Traveling throughout Europe, he was exposed to more art and culture.
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 many other areas, in “Dragon City”, Dharan, close to a devastating missile attack. On February 25, 1991, hewitnessed 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. He was deployed to the demilitarized zone in Korea for a year and after returning, underwent art therapy treatment at Walter Reed Hospital, in Maryland. His artwork got the counselor's attention during art therapy classes, inspiring Jansen to think aboutpainting again. Jansen was stationed in Germany for his last duty assignment with the 1st Infantry Division in Vilseck, Bavaria. He moved in with girlfriend Michaela Hansen, an economics major from RWTH Aachen, originally from Greifswald, in former East Germany.
1997-2003
Jansen married Michaela and she is his biggest supporter during the first part of his career while he is becoming more critical of U.S. interventions and attitudes regarding foreign policies and undeclared military interventions. He was discharged honorably in 1997 with the rank of sergeant just after seeing Julian Schnabel’s 1996 film Basquiat. His own art career began in Aachen the same year, arranging a debut exhibition at Aula Carolina. For the first time since his discharge, he is noted by the Aachener Zeitung. Jansen approached Dr. Annette Lagler, director at the Ludwig Forum for International Art, for guidance, while living only blocks away from the museum. He shared photos of work from 1997 and she gave helpful advice to the young artist.
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 encouragedJansen to continue his art.
Jansen decided to leave Aachen and return to New York City to test his work with a larger international audience while having difficulty holding other jobs. He hoppedbetween the Bronx, Queens and Manhattan, staying with relatives while selling his work on street corners. His painting “subway82” was chosen in a NYC Russel Simmons art competition in the semifinal round to show at the Copacabana night club, where he met “Crazy Legs” from the infamous Rock Steady Crew, who admired his work.
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” who displayed their art on the streets of SOHO. It is then that one of his first buyers, Hollywood actor John Ortiz, purchased “Harlem Deli” (30X 40) while filming a movie with Julian Schnabel in Manhattan. He also sold his highest-priced street painting to date for $750 to New York art dealer Monya Rowe.
Considering family life first, Jansen left the streets of New York and moved to Atlanta in August 2001 with Michaela. Two months later, the September 11 attack took place in New York, where many of his “princestreetkings” friends witnessed the event and left the city. Urban art enthusiast and cultural game-changer in Bed Stuy Brooklyn, Richard Beavers, saw Jansen’s work in an ad in The Source magazine. 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 startedselling Jansen’s work nationally, but focused on the Brooklyn community, placing works with NBA New York Knicks all-star Carmelo Anthony and noted collector Peggy Cooper-Cafritz from his gallery on Marcus Garvey Blvd..
Jansen started exploring the human condition in the post-911 era in his work, 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 where the 20th-century master Robert Rauschenberg resides on Captiva island.
2004-2009
Jansen had the 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 to him by Grammy-winning musician Kat Epple after Rauschenberg viewedJansen’s painting and complimented his work. The same year, Jansen met art historian Jerome A. Donson. The former director of the famous American Vanguard Exhibitions 1961 that traveled to Europe and included Rauschenberg, Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and others, discovered Jansen's work. Donsonwrote about the artist in Jansen's first French catalog, Marcus Jansen Modern Urban Expressionism, in which he called Jansen the “innovator of Modern Expressionism” and compared it with the Ash Can School.Jansen was commissioned for a politically critical satire as part of the Warner Brothers 80th anniversary. He wasselected for the 12th International Print & Drawing Biennial in Taiwan with juror David Kiehl, from the Whitney Museum of Art, shortly thereafter, as one of only nine other Americans in 2007.
He began painting large-scale works in the post9/11 era and was alarmed by the emerging surveillance state in 2008 and 2009. Jansen addressed politics, social issues, the patenting of pigs 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, becameJansen’s first international dealer and agent. Novotek CFO Mark Gyetvay, an avid art collector from Naples, Florida, whose keen eye is noted in the Financial Times, becameJansen's number one collector, acquiring the extraordinary work “Creeping Obstacles in Kansas”.
2010-2015
Jansen 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 selects “Creeping Obstacles In Kansas” for the cover of New American Paintings Volume 94. 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. The Baker Museum included Jansenin their annual exhibition (Florida Contemporary) in 2014.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 waspublicized by Rolling Stone, Arte, XL Repubblica, and ESPOARTE. Jansen’s painting “The Visitors" became Jansen’s first to ever be auctioned in Milan in 2014; hosted by renowned auctioneer Vittorio Sgarbi, curator of the Italian Pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale.
Sabrina Gruber, 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. Jansen’s London dealer Steve Lazarides, BANKSY’s first agent, invited Jansen for his first solo show with the Whistleblower Gallery and became Jansen’s UK representative.
2016-2018
Jansen’s father and mentor Hans Jansen, perhaps hisstrongest 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. A headline in EXPOART magazine read, “A New Star is born?” In a review by Italian art critic Igor Zanti. The exhibition is inaugurated by art historian Dr. Elmar Zorn and curated by Dr. Brooke Lynn McGowan and RossellaFarinotti.
Jansen's book Marcus Jansen DECADE is published by Skira Editore, in Milan. The 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 Whitehot magazine, NY, WEST Rubenstein and others.
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 Prof. Dr. Manfred Schneckenburger; two-time Documenta Kassel curator, who referred to Jansen as “one of the most important American painters of his generation”; Prof. 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.
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 Casterline Goodman 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 on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd in downtown Fort Myers which served as a catalyst to change the neighborhoods public image.
2019-2020
Jansen 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" (84 X 72) for its permanent collection. Jansen had his New York Film Premiere at the East Hampton TV Festival with Marcus Jansen Examine and Report, winning and award for Best Art TV Pilot Documentary, and was featured in an artist profile in The Epoch Times. He returned to his native Bronx New York and openeda second studio in the Port Morris/Motthaven neighborhood.
He 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 Naples, Florida, in 2021. His work “Plot #2” (48 x 60)” was placed in the permanent collection at The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art,Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College. French Art dealer Almine Rech invites Jansen to show solo in Paris in 2021 and in London in 2022. The gallery announcedglobal representation of the artist in December 2020.
2021-2022
After the first two Almine Rech sold-out solo shows in Paris and in London and his first Florida solo Museum show at the Rollins Museum of Art followed by the Baker Museum, six other shows curated by Almine Rech and Richard Beavers Gallery in Brooklyn all sell out. Jansen is highlighted in the New York Times for the second time in a year, while The Bronx Museum becomes the first New York City museum to acquire Jansen’s work into it’s permanent collection.