Channa Horwitz

Now recognized as a significant figure in Conceptual Art and West Coast Minimalism, Channa Horwitz only gained acknowledgment from the art world much later in life.

Biogrpahy of Channa Horwitz

Horwitz was born in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, in 1932. She attended the Art Center School of Design from 1950 to 1952.

As a married mother of two, she pursued painting at California State University Northridge from 1960 to 1963 while residing in Tarzana. During her time at CSUN, her instructors encouraged her to adopt an Abstract Expressionist style, urging her to "be free" and "throw the paint."

In 1964, while already exploring the deconstruction of form and creating large, hard-edged oil paintings featuring limited motifs and basic geometric shapes, Horwitz began sketching what would later become her "Language Series" body of work, which she eventually began to actualize in 2003. This series involved combining circles, squares, and rectangles with sequential numbers ranging from 1 to 8 to form compositions. Horwitz arranged these compositions into linear, progressive patterns based on the corresponding numbers.  

Also in 1964, Horwitz initiated a series of architectural interior renderings for a fictional couple named "Mr. and Mrs. McGillicutty." Each rendering comprised basic interior elements such as windows and window blinds.

By 1966, she abandoned all narrative pretexts and simplified her artistic vocabulary to solely black and white, focusing on the circle and the square.

Horwitz earned her BFA from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia in 1972, where she studied alongside John Baldessari and Allan Kaprow. She married her second husband, Jim Horwitz, in 1973. Ыру received an Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1978.

Despite being largely overlooked throughout her career, Horwitz's work has been increasingly recognized in recent years. She was featured in prominent exhibitions such as the Whitney Biennial in 2014 and the Venice Biennale in 2013. Additionally, she was honored with a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship Grant in 2013, shortly before her passing at the age of eighty.