Larry Horowitz
COVER : TITLE
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River Rapids (detail), 2013 - see page 41 PAGES : Path (detail), 2013 - see page 37
Larry Horowitz
The Romantic Landscape
F R A N K L I N B OW L E S G A L L E R I E S Sa n Fran cisco / N ew York
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very man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth. In like manner, nature is already, in its forms and tendencies, describing its own design. Let us interrogate the great apparition that shines so peacefully around us. Let us inquire, to what end is nature? – Ralph Waldo Emerson, introduction to Nature, 1836
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Larry Horowitz
&
the Romantic Landscape
The Metropolitan Museum is a landmark of New York life, and it certainly provided inspiration for the young Larry Horowitz. As he meandered between Charles Inness’ autumn landscapes and Winslow Homer’s majestic Maine seascapes, Larry Horowitz developed what would become his avocation; to be an American artist and to document our American landscape that is so close to his heart and to those of his predecessors in paint. When Larry and I sat down for a long lunch after our studio visit in the fall, he reflected on his childhood and mentioned a Tiffany lamp in his home growing up. As we began to discuss our visit to the Met, along with collectors of his art this coming spring, I asked him where he would like to begin our tour. Immediately he said, “Let’s begin at the Tiffany window, I always thought that my paintings had the rich and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York glowing color of stained glass.”
With this in mind, our first stop will be the breathtaking Tiffany window, Autumn Landscape, created between 1923 and 1924 of leaded Favrile glass in the American Wing sculpture courtyard. After this, we will walk down the hall, past the early American portraiture galleries and explore the Hudson River School painters, beginning with its founder, Thomas Cole. The twenty-year-old prodigy’s masterpiece, View from Mount Holyoke The Oxbow, is on display in the first gallery.
Tiffany Studios Autumn Landscape, 1923-24
OPPOSITE :
Uncle Tim’s Bridge (detail), 2011 - see page 33
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Thomas Cole, who painted in the early 1800’s, admired JMW Turner and John Constable, both English Romantic landscapists. Cole also enjoyed the philosophy of American Transcendentalism, best exemplified by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau, in Walden, reflected on the benefits of nature and on his deep communion with it, stating that the only "medicine he need[ed] is a draught of morning air." While still in high school, Larry attended the Art Students League in New York, and studied under the American social realist, Isaac Soyer. While studying at State University of New York at Purchase, Larry and other students were asked to suggest artists to come to the campus as visiting professors; he and his fellow students asked for Paul Resika, Thomas Cole, View from Mount Holyoke – The Oxbow, 1836 the elegant Provincetown painter, and Resika came to teach them, singling out the young Larry Horowitz for special notice. Shortly afterwards, near the time of his graduation, Larry was offered a position with the artist Wolf Kahn and for six years worked as the American colorist’s assistant. Horowitz often describes himself as a true Romantic, as a painter on a spiritual quest. His journeys, travelling by station wagon into the small hamlets of New England and Canada, into the southern landscapes of Carolina mountains and Virginia valleys, are documented in pastel, watercolor and oil. Just like Thomas Cole, Horowitz sometimes has dreams about particular places to paint and then knows that he must return there to capture that moment of internal vision. Once while at Mount Katahdin, Maine, Larry Horowitz searched for and found the cabin that Frederic Church stayed in and made a drawing to commemorate his discovery of this second-generation, Hudson River School luminary’s haunt. The cabin of Frederic Church A conservationist who is preserving the American landscape for future generations, Horowitz reflects the spirit of the Hudson River School painters, who traveled up the Hudson, hiked into the Catskills, Adirondacks and the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Larry Horowitz packs up his canvases, papers and paints in the car; sometimes, he will spend a week or two in a particular place of interest, or visit an old friend in the mountains when they call to tell him that the leaves have reached their autumnal peak.
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He likes to experience with his feet the natural places that have inspired generations in this nation. Like Thoreau at Walden Pond, Larry Horowitz is equally inspired by watching the spring snows melt into bluish shadows in the woods adjacent to his home in upstate New York. In the summers he might wander over to Annie Dillard’s house, not far from his on Cape Cod, in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, and paint the boats, the tidal variations, and the magnificent skies over the bay. Dillard’s most famous book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, documented her own version of Thoreau’s Walden Pond experience, in a series of masterful essays about the connection between man and nature. The first chapter, "Heaven and Earth in Jest," serves as an introduction to the book. The narrator describes the location as well as her connection to it: I live by a creek, Tinker Creek, in a valley in Virginia's Blue Ridge. An anchorite's hermitage is called an anchor-hold; some anchor-holds were simple sheds clamped to the side of a church like a barnacleor a rock. I think of this house clamped to the side of Tinker Creek as an anchor-hold. It holds me at anchor to the rock bottom of the creek itself and keeps me steadied in the current, as a sea anchor does, facing the stream of light pouring down. It's a good place to live; there's a lot to think about. Thoreau, Dillard and now Horowitz all share the opinion that man and nature must be able to coexist amidst the shifting tides of modern technology and industrialization. By opening our eyes with his keen and deeply heartfelt observations of the natural world, Larry Horowitz brings us back to the Romantic. He also brings us forward to the Abstract Expressionists, the generation of 1950’s painters who were looking for a new mythology to define the post-World War II exisLarry Horowitz, A Moment of Solitude, 2013 – see page 14 tence. We’ve shown Larry’s art for many years and we frequently discuss the links that the artist has to the Hudson River and Provincetown schools of American painting. But we also talk about the artist’s connection to the Abstract Expressionist generation of painters in New York–to Willem DeKooning, whom Larry Horowitz met in Long Island in his youth, and to Hans Hoffman, who taught Wolf Kahn, Larry’s early mentor at the Art Students League in New York. In the art of Larry Horowitz, extremely vivid color palettes often express heightened emotional levels of engagement with a particular place, or a unique moment, observed by the artist in 7
nature. By fusing an Expressionist technique of push and pull, championed by Hans Hoffman, Larry Horowitz has created a new kind of painting; one that combines internal dialogue with self discovery through paint and observation of a beloved or newly discovered landscape. Larry’s paintings speak to us in a unique visual language, a synthesis for the 21st century. As we look at his new paintings this spring, we will again feel the sublime in nature: awe, grandeur and harmony. We can explore the maps of personal experience voiced in his art. We can begin to see how Larry Horowitz paintings connect with our private emotions and celebrate our sense of place. Horowitz describes his personal process thusly: “the artist chooses from millions of stimuli distilling them into an artistic language through color, tone and design.” His paintings reveal the hidden Walden in each of our hearts and enrich our vision with luminosity like that from a Tiffany glass lamp.
L E S L I E L U N D , C urator Fra nk li n B owle s G alle rie s, N ew York
Larrry painting on the beach
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Cape May (detail) 2013 - see page 31
Works on Canvas
“. . . Larry Horowitz has created a new kind of painting; one that combines internal dialogue with self discovery through paint and observation . . .” – Leslie Lund
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Whalebone 2013 oil on canvas 52 x 72 in.
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Winter Light 2013 oil on canvas 26 x 36 in.
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Snowy Shadows 2013 oil on canvas 34 x 52 in.
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A Moment of Solitude 2013 oil on canvas 62 x 76 in.
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Tranquil Cove Sunset 2013 oil on canvas 58 x 76 in.
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Coastal Village 2012 oil on canvas 14 x 44 in.
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Sailboat Cove 2013 oil on canvas 22 x 52 in.
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Majestic Fall 2012 oil on canvas 39 x 99 in.
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Fall Tree 2013 oil on canvas 56 x 20 in.
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Thru the Trees 2013 oil on canvas 36 x 52 in.
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Fall on the Hudson 2013 oil on canvas 23 x 27 in.
Westfield Shadows 2013 oil on canvas 13 x 25 in.
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Sunset Oval 2013 oil on canvas 36 x 42 in.
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“The artist chooses from millions of stimuli distilling them into an artistic language through color, tone and design.� Larry Horowitz
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Delaware Reflections 2013 oil on canvas 44 x 66 in.
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Vermont Autumn 2013 oil on canvas 54 x 72 in.
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Late Fall Tree 2012 oil on canvas 54 x 38 in.
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Carriage House 2010 oil on canvas 41 x 16 in.
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Dappled Fall Light 2013 oil on canvas 40 x 54 in.
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Connecticut Creek 2012 oil on canvas 25 x 32 in.
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Cape May 2013 oil on canvas 24 x 36 in.
Watch Hill Light 2013 oil on canvas 26 x 34 in.
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Shady Fall 2011 oil on canvas 36 x 48 in.
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Uncle Tim’s Bridge 2011 oil on canvas 36 x 48 in.
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Fall on Cat Hill 2012 oil on canvas 12 x 46 in.
Fall on Hazen's Notch 2012 oil on canvas 24 x 78 in.
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Winding Road 2013 oil on canvas 16 x 38 in.
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Path 2013 oil on canvas 26 x 37 in.
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Racing Boats 2013 oil on canvas 28 x 40 in.
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Cottages on the Pier 2013 oil on canvas 44 x 66 in.
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Yellow Umbrella 2013 oil on canvas 43 x 16 in.
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Slice of Autumn 2013 oil on canvas 38 x 10 in.
River Rapids 2013 oil on canvas 34 x 36 in.
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Kenniston Barns 2013 oil on canvas 44 x 58 in.
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Quiet Farm 2013 oil on canvas 54 x 72 in.
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Aurora Schoolhouse 2013 oil on canvas 30 x 38 in.
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Barn at Hazen’s Notch 2013 oil on canvas 24 x 33 in.
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Pump House Winter 2012 oil on canvas 26 x 44 in.
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Snowfall 2012 oil on canvas 24 x 34 in.
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Our Little Farm 2013 oil on canvas 26 x 35 in.
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Flowers by the Sea 2013 oil on canvas 28 x 31 in.
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Fall Grasses 2013 oil on canvas 36 x 25 in.
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Index Aurora Schoolhouse
44
Path
37
Barn at Hazen’s Notch
45
Pump House Winter
46
Cape May
31
Quiet Farm
43
Carriage House
28
Racing Boats
38
16-17
River Rapids
41
Coastal Village Connecticut Creek
30
Sailboat Cove
Cottages on the Pier
39
Shady Fall
32
Dappled Fall Light
29
Slice of Autumn
40
Delaware Reflections
25
Snowfall
47
Fall Grasses
50
Snowy Shadows
13
16-17
Fall on Cat Hill
34-35
Sunset Oval
23
Fall on Hazen's Notch
34-35
Thru the Trees
21
Fall on the Hudson
22
Tranquil Cove Sunset
15
Fall Tree
20
Uncle Tim’s Bridge
33
Flowers by the Sea
49
Vermont Autumn
26
Kenniston Barns
42
Watch Hill Light
31
Late Fall Tree
27
Westfield Shadows
22
Majestic Fall
18-19
Whalebone
10-11
A Moment of Solitude
14
Winding Road
36
Our Little Farm
48
Winter Light
12
Yellow Umbrella
40
PROJECT MANAGERS :
Stacey Bellis / Emilee Enders INTERACTIVE CATALOG : D. L EE M YERS D ESIGN PHOTOGRAPHY : Scott Saraceno
BACK COVER :
Snowfall (detail) 2012 – see page 47
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FRANKLIN BOWLES GALLERIES
431 West Broadway New York NY 10012
212.226.1616 / 800.926.9537
765 / 799 Beach Street San Francisco CA 94109 349 Geary Street San Francisco CA 94102
415.441.8008 / 800.926.9535
415.441.8008 / 800.926.9535
www.franklinbowlesgaller y.com