Words from Jano about her painting

Jano quoted Matisse (who died the year she arrived in Paris, in 1955), who claimed: « No artist has ever come out of the Beaux-Arts. » And she recounted: « I was at the Beaux-Arts at twelve, but that’s not where I learned my craft. Later, I wandered through the Louvre, crying and repeating to myself: “I haven’t understood anything!” It was because of the suffering I endured at that time that I learned to paint. I copied Rembrandt. Back then, you had to pay to copy paintings in the Louvre: a friend bought two-hour slots for himself but used only 1h30 and left me the last half hour – it was under these conditions that I was able to copy paintings... »

She also emotionally quoted this phrase from Chagall, near the end of his life: « Finally, I unlearned how to draw! »

Jano rejected the characterization of her painting as abstract. Commenting on photographs of tree bark, she marveled: « Look, that’s a Rembrandt! And that, a Soulages! And this one, it’s a Jano... » The drawing of marble, the iridescence of a bird feather (particularly the blue of jay wings, which she especially admired, like Christian Bobin) or of a dragonfly (insects dear to her friend Alain Cugno), elicited the same observations: Jano’s painting reveals Nature in its profound mystery. Giorgio Morandi asserted: « There is nothing more surreal or abstract than reality itself. »

Jano explained: « I don’t understand people who talk about a painting being blue or pink. It’s not this or that color that matters, but the relationship between the colors. Claiming to love a particular color in a painting is like saying: “What a magnificent symphony – especially the E’s and C’s!” »

Before cataract surgery in 2016, she wasn’t worried about « seeing more clearly », but about « seeing differently » what she had seen since childhood with her brushes... She asked the doctor: « Will it be warmer... colder in the relationships between colors? » Because, she explained, « my life consists of “correcting” each nuance, every day, since my very first lessons... In fact, I think only in “relationships of color,” quite far from the question of clarity... »

« One can create a rainbow at home…, » she wrote to a friend, « with sunlight and a bit of water. Light is offered to us so that we may penetrate it with the desire to understand... and to participate. Long live reserves of colors to give free rein to our fantasies! Friends asked me what my favorite word in the French language was, and without hesitation, I replied: fantasy. It’s a word of infinite richness, open to all interpretations... all creations... all latitudes... infinite dimensions... and one that will never end! You are free to enrich it every day with your heart and mind, and the wealth you have received since birth. That’s my favorite word! I think it infinitely surpasses everything that can be said about freedom, hope, etc. It’s my preference, what I was born for. »

Having finished reading Le Pays où l’on n’arrive jamais, a novel by André Dhôtel, Jano wrote: « I finally finished the book, completely obsessed with the rhythm, the color of Belgium, and this insane search for that unattainable country... I don’t really know how to express what I feel about my childhood... my illusions, my search, my origins... it’s crazy how out of time I felt in this reading! My eyes hurt, and I need to find a bit of reality!!... I’ll tell about my journey, I’m so close to Gaspard [the hero of Dhôtel’s novel]... I wonder if my country isn’t... color! It’s been so long that I’ve been searching, and I’ve taken every road offered to me... »

While she was with Jean-Marie Tézé in his studio at 36 rue de Sèvres, Le Corbusier, who occupied the studio above, once came down asking for their help, as he didn’t know how to make a mold: it was about molding a model of the hand that, upon arriving in Chandigarh, signals the city’s proximity... Jano took charge of it. « If I hadn’t been a painter, I would have wanted to be an architect, » she said. « Construction sites fascinate me: when I see a sign saying “construction site prohibited to the public,” I have to go in, feel the concrete... »

Her father was an architect, and she admired him greatly: it was he who gave Jano a love for drawing and encouraged her to enroll in the Beaux-Arts. In a black folder, she kept three of his drawings of admirable finesse, made with pen and sepia ink: the vaults of a cathedral, an ornamental lock, and a rose drawn on a letter to his beloved one day on leave: masterpieces! Jano, in turn, chose during her studies a project that led her to draw the bell towers of cathedrals in the Rhineland – including that of Cologne...

Looking at Jano’s drawings, Le Corbusier told her: « Form matters more than feeling. »

At a dinner with Jesuit fathers Paul Beauchamp and Jean Laplace, Jano had brought an elongated painting with an abstract motif, on the back of which she had written: « Jerusalem, by a witness who has never seen Jerusalem. » As Father Beauchamp held the painting, a young Jesuit entered and commented: « It looks like Jerusalem! » He was asked if he knew the holy city: he had never been there...

In 1966, Father Alain Ponsard, parish priest of Saint-Séverin church in Paris, commissioned stained glass windows from Jean Bazaine (1): Jano knew both men well and contributed to the installation of the windows. Bazaine was not a believer, and Father Ponsard knew little about colors: yet, in their discussions, Bazaine would sometimes become passionate about the meaning of confirmation, and the priest would suggest pink in a particular spot – as if they were working in such harmony that they ended up exchanging their expertise...

Bazaine wrote to Jano: « I believe, dear Jano, that when one says a painting deepens, one must take this image literally. You have dug deep, and those dramatic impulses that have always driven, constructed your painting, they are now buried in a more secret humus. You, who seem so fragile, what strength allows you to move heavens and earth, until you plunge back into this living original matter that we all seek, by various paths, to rediscover? »