Romanian and Israeli visual artist, architect and art theorist Marcel Iancu was the co-inventor of Dadaism and a leading figure of Constructivism in Eastern Europe. An influential figure within all these fields, Iancu was also involved in several key publications during his career - including Romanian neo-avantgarde magazines Contimporanul and Simbolul, as founder, editor, writer and graphic designer. Iancu’s experiments in abstract art stemmed from a theorization of abstract-expressionistic decorations as part of a basic architectural design. In 1926, he was present at the Hasefer Art Show in Bucharest, and created what is often described as the first Constructivist structure in Bucharest. He had several personal exhibitions, in Tel Aviv, Milan and Paris and attended the 1966 Venice Art Biennale. He won the Israel Prize of 1967, in recognition of his work as a painter.

In 1922, after a brief stay in Paris, Iancu returned to Romania. Composition, 1926 belongs to the period following his return, when a transition from paintings of local landscapes, peasants and interiors depicted in a modernist style and a palette of dark browns started to turn towards abstract shapes in a more colourful palette. His search for harmony in abstraction manifested itself through lines and colours that, similar to music compositions, are placed in an “un-arranged symphony”.