Armin Horovitz
A Mountain Battery on Monte Gusella--Pictorial representation of mountain artillery position
Armin Horovitz was the son of the famous Hungarian painter, Leopold Horovitz. Born in Warsaw in 1873, Armin was also a painter, and a lithographer. He specialized in landscapes and portraits. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, and worked alternately in Vienna, Warsaw and Manchester. Horovitz enlisted in 1915, and became an army artist in 1916 and worked opposite the Italian positions in the Alps and the Tyrol.
Horovitz created Gebirgsbatterie auf dem Monte Gusella (A Mountain Battery on Monte Gusella) as part of his work as an army artist. The painting is stylistically influenced by the French Nabis* and the Swiss painter, Felix, Vallotton,** in particular. All that remains of convoys and soldiers are shapes lost in the white immensity of the mountain and a gun in the shadows, incongruous and absurd in such a place, in such a work, all snow and pale colors.
Nabis was a group of artists who, through their widely diverse activities, exerted a major influence on the art produced in France during the late 19th century. They maintained that a work of art reflects an artist’s synthesis of nature into personal aesthetic metaphors and symbols. The Nabis were greatly influenced by Japanese woodcuts, FrenchSymbolist painting, and English Pre-Raphaelite art. Their primary inspiration, however, stemmed from the Pont-Aven school, which centered on the Post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin.
Félix Edouard Vallotton was an important figure in the development of the modern woodcut.
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