Kamnitnik (Kamnitnik in Snow)
Kamnitnik Hill in snow is one of the great paintings in Grohar’s oeuvre, manifest as such in the visible signature and date. The composition is built up tectonically with a great white foreground covering close to half the area of the picture. A pathway sways in a broad curve from left to right and beyond it lies horizontally anchored edge-to-edge Kamnitnik Hill, glowing in the warm light of the afternoon sun. The simplicity of forms gives the composition its monumentality and the height to the hill that cannot be recognized in nature. The painting is connected with The Blizzard by the uniformity of paint handling, yet in this case different at the same time. By sedimentation of the double crossed strokes both horizontally and vertically regardless of shapes and composition lines it continues confidently edge to edge. It transgresses the white surface into the tile red belt only to continue in to the white segment again and then into the ochre and tile red stacks of the open flank of the hill. Precisely that uniformity of paint handling bestows on it an extraordinary unity and solidity, of a cast in a single grand gesture. It is impossible to pinpoint it among the paintings exhibited before the Great War but it is highly unlikely that it was absent in the display of important paintings. It is likely to have been hidden under the name In February exhibited in Sofia (1906) and Belgrade (1907), which corroborate recently discovered photos of the Belgrade exhibition.