LARRY HOROWITZ: AN AMERICAN ARTIST
NOVEMBER 2018
New York
In college I was told that landscape painting is dead. I decided to reinvent that notion. I took two uniquely American painting styles, The Hudson River School and Abstract Expressionism, put them in my artistic blender, and came up with something new—my perspective on the American Landscape.
--Larry Horowitz, 2018
AN AMERICAN ARTIST
We recently asked Larry Horowitz: “What is American about American Art? And also – what do you feel is uniquely American about your work?”
Here’s what he told us:
I was born in New York and raised in a typical American suburb. I attended public school and a state university for my art degree. I lived through and experienced the Cold War, John Glenn, Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon, the space shuttle, the Vietnam War and the peace movement, rock and roll, and 9/11. These things percolate through my work like sweat coming out of my pores.
My education is American. My teachers were: Gerald Fairclough, a Vietnam War artist; Isaac Soyer at the Art Student’s League; Nick Marsicano’s teaching of (Hans) Hoffman’s push/pull and Abstract Expressionism. I met and spent time in the studios of Wolf Kahn, Emily Mason, Irving Petlin, Willem DeKooning, and Jennifer Bartlett, among others.
The United States does not have an ancient civilization with pyramids and coliseums. Barns and skyscrapers are America’s archeology. Traveling across the country, I paint them both, looking for recognizable motifs and hidden gems. When I travel across our borders to such countries as Iceland, Japan, Canada, Finland and Israel… I paint their landscapes through American eyes, unburdened by their culture and history.
In college I was told that landscape painting is dead. I decided to reinvent that notion. I took two uniquely American painting styles, The Hudson River School and Abstract Expressionism, put them in my artistic blender, and came up with something new—my perspective on the American Landscape.
Larry Horowitz