Armin Horowitz was born to a Jewish family in Warsaw, Congress Kingdom of Poland, then part of the Russian Empire (modern-day Poland) in 1880. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (1897–1901), later at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and, on graduating, began working as a portrait painter. Following the Anschluss in 1938, he immigrated to England to avoid racial persecution, where – with an exception of a trip to Mexico in 1955 – he lived and worked for the remainder of his life.
Painter Armin Horowitz was born in Warsaw, Congress Kingdom of Poland, then part of the Russian Empire (modern-day Poland) in 1880, the son of Leopold Horowitz (1837–1917), a Jewish artist of Hungarian descent. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (1897–1901) under Christian Griepenkerl (1839–1916) and Alois Delug (1859–1930) and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich under Leo Putz (1869–1940), during which time he made several study trips to France, Italy, the Netherlands and England. On graduating he began working as a portrait painter and executed several portraits of members of the Dutch noble family, the Bentincks, now held in the collections of Amerongen, Middachten and Twickel castles in the Netherlands (the Bentincks' family seats). During the 1910s he also took part in several Viennese Secession exhibitions, as well as the important first International Exhibition for the Book Trade and Graphic Design (Internationale Ausstellung für Buchgewerbe und Graphik, known as BUGRA), held in Leipzig in 1914. Following the outbreak of the First World War, in February 1915 Horowitz volunteered for the 5th trainee division in Pressburg (now Bratislava, Slovakia) and was stationed on the Serbian front from October. As the commander of transport in various prisoner-of-war camps, he had the opportunity to study the different characters and battle-weary faces of both officers and the common army conscripts, and reproduced their portraits to benefit the Red Cross. In June 1916 he was appointed an official War Painter for the K.u.K. Kriegspressequartiers, the press and propaganda office of the Austro-Hungarian High Command, a position he held until November 1918. During the interwar period, Horowitz worked as a portrait painter and book illustrator in Vienna and was awarded a silver medal by the Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw in 1936.
In 1938, following the Anschluss (the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany) he immigrated to England, where, with an exception of a trip to Mexico in 1955, he lived and worked for the rest of his life. One of his few known portraits from this period is of Sir (Thomas) Richard Fiennes Barrett-Lennard (1938), a banker and prominent Essex figure, now in the collection of Essex Country Council. Horowitz died in Norwich in 1965. He also painted a Miss E. R. Frisby; the portrait was subsequently exhibited in the Leicester Museum and Art Gallery in March 1942. His work is also represented in the UK in the collection of the British Museum.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Armin Horowitz]
Publications related to [Armin Horowitz] in the Ben Uri Library