Up for sale is a wonderful painting by the artist Peter Horowitz.

The painting came from the artist's estate with other paintings, unfortunately it is not signed but is definitely identified and associated with the unique style of this artist.

The painting features a style rooted in Cubism and Modernism, characterized by the use of simplified geometric forms to represent a humanoid figure. Similar stylistic elements can be seen in the early works of Roy Lichtenstein and the compositions of Paul Klee.

Dimensions: 46.5X35 cm.

In good general condition, without significant defects, without holes, burns and light wear.

Please examine the photos attached to this item.

You are welcome to enter our store to be impressed by other items we offer for sale.

**** (1922-2005) - Peter Horowitz was born in Borysław (Eastern Galicia) to his father, Leon Starnbach, and his mother, Malka née Horowitz (his last name was named after his mother). His father, an educated man who was interested in philosophy and literature, was a furrier by profession. When he was 12 years old, his family moved to Przemysl. In 1937, his father died, and his mother returned to Borysław. He remained alone in the city, where he graduated from a secondary school in 1938.

Horowitz has been drawing and painting since childhood. At school he primarily studied drawing models, Animals, and still life. In 1939, the city was divided between the Russians and the Germans, while he lived in the Russian part. He was lucky and learned from a Russian soldier how to draw portraits of the great leaders, and thus made a decent living by painting four-meter-high portraits of the leaders (Stalin, Lenin, etc.). The Russians paid so well for these paintings that the money was enough for him to be executed, and to support his mother in Boryslav.

When the Germans occupied the city, he worked for about a year as a slave, until he escaped to a village far from the city and worked as a cattle herder for a Polish farmer. After nine months, the farmers handed him over to the Gestapo, and he was sent to a concentration camp in Plaszow (near Krakow), where he worked as a hard laborer. In 1944, the camp was liberated by the Russians, and Horwitz traveled to Krakow. During this period, Horwitz was exhausted, hungry, and lonely until he connected with the Jewish community (which was organized after war).

In 1945, he was accepted to study at the Krakow Academy. Although he won a small scholarship, he had to work in the evenings to make a living retouching photographs for a photographer. In 1948, a commercial cooperative was organized in the city, which invited academy students to paint portraits of the leaders of communist Russia and Poland. Hurwitz, who had gained his experience with the Russians, excelled in these works and was well paid. In 1951, he graduated from the academy, and even won a diploma and a silver medal. On that occasion, he held an exhibition and sold two works.

Since Hurwitz entered the art scene in Krakow, he had been a member of the Krakow Artists' Association, received a monthly scholarship and painting materials from the authorities in exchange for a picture, and also held a series of exhibitions in Krakow, Warsaw, Poznań, and elsewhere. In 1956, he exhibited four of his pictures together with a group of other Polish artists at the Biennale of São Paulo. And in 1962, two of his works were exhibited in the Polish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

In 1966, he immigrated to Israel. And in the winter of 1970/71, he held a solo exhibition at the Chamerinsky Gallery in Tel Aviv. In 1968, he visited Paris.

Hurwitz loved classical music, and even played the violin. His musical talent is noticeable in his paintings. The painter pours his colors onto the painting surface with a magical musicality, and likes to place the figure of the violinist (who symbolizes him) at the edges of the works.

Gabriel Telfir defines Hurwitz as a painter of stature, who knows well the value of every brushstroke and every stain he places on the painting. According to him, two elements stand out in his painting: extensive knowledge of everything related to the pictorial system, and also, the fertile imagination of an artistic personality who is confident in her powers and her pictorial path. His color scale is very personal. In a change Tones and shades. He simultaneously develops two pictorial trends, which emphasize his artistic personality. The first: figurative-imaginary painting, in which the rich folkloric element, partly Jewish, stands out. In these paintings, the background is influenced by paintings from the Gothic style of construction of the city of Krakow, and even of Jewish construction in Krakow such as synagogues, which are also built in the Gothic style. The figures that the painter paints are very unique. They are surrounded by legend and poetry. They are usually elongated, stylized, and often possessed of movement. Sometimes Hurwitz's figures are from folklore and legends, full of life, colorful with a wealth of bright shades.

In the works, one can also find connections to the Holocaust through various symbols taken from the world of Judaism such as: a Torah scroll, a menorah, a prayer book, etc. Jews wrapped in tallit against the background of a synagogue, etc. In all of these, the artist sails into rich folkloric and legendary worlds, which reveal a touch of his mental world. The artist.

The other type of the artist's paintings tends towards abstraction. Based on an abstract geometric array in which symbols are embedded such as: the moon in its renewal, a lamp hanging in the space of the world, a chessboard, and more... The wheel occupies an important place in these works, perhaps a symbol of the wheel of fortune of man.

Hurwitz's paintings are imbued to a great extent with poetry and romanticism. Full of a wealth of fantasy and imagination.

Source: By Gabriel Telfir. "Gazit" volume 27, issue 18.

"Nama Gallery", Yair Gallery, Tirosh Gallery.