H.C. Westermann |
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1922 - 1981
By the time of his death, fifty-eight year old H.C. Westermann had built a body of work so diverse in its execution and powerful in its reach that his influence as a post-war artist endures to this day, perhaps without peer. Born Horace Clifford in 1922, Westermann served as a gunner aboard the USS Enterprise during World War II and, several years later, reenlisted as a Marine during the Korean War. It was upon the battlefield that Westermann found his raison d'etre; after his discharge in 1952, Westermann switched his focus from advertising to fine arts, addressing with his work the debilitating effects—psychological and practical—of combat. Although he experimented with paintings, comics and prints, Westermann, a gifted carpenter, is best known for wooden sculptures, weighty both in heft and consequence, which balanced the grotesqueries of his subject with the smooth impassivity of masterful craft. In his Death Ship series, Westermann returned time and again to the kamikaze attacks he suffered on the Enterprise, producing—along with drawings and lithographs—simple, streamlined ships housed in coffin-like boxes. These abandoned vessels, painted with shark fins and polished to a deep sheen, draw their power from the ominous cloud of history that hangs over the lovely object. Westermann’s revolutionary approach to his life’s work, marrying folksy, appealing craft to a sophisticated agenda, produced an oeuvre as deeply affecting and important as it is aesthetically appealing.
Died, Danbury, Connecticut
Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Santa Monica
Chicago Museum of Art, Chicago
Lennon, Weinberg, Inc, New York
Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York
Richmond Art Center, Richmond
Madison Art Center, Madison
Lennon, Weinberg, Inc, New York
Frumkin Adams Gallery, New York
Lennon, Weinberg, Inc, New York
Xavier Fourcade, Inc, New York
Arts Council of Great Britain, Serpentine Gallery, London
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans
Des Moines Art Centre, Des Moines
Seattle Art Museum, Seattle
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York
John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco
Allan Frumkin Gallery, Chicago
James Corcoran Gallery, Los Angeles
Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York
Gallery Neuendorf, Hamburg
Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York
Allan Frumkin Gallery, Chicago
Moore College of Art, Philadelphia
Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, Cologne
University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley
Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York
Allan Frumkin Gallery, Chicago
Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York
Galerie Thomas Borgmann, Cologne
Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles
Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York
Allan Frumkin Gallery, Chicago
Kansas City of Art Institute, Kansas City
Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York
Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York
Dilexi Gallery, San Francisco
Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York
Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York
"Art in Chicago, 1945-1995", Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
"Drawing in Air", Ceolfrith Gallery, Sunderland Arts Centre
"Who Chicago", Camden Arts Centre, London
Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
"Chicago: The City and Its Artists 1945-1978", The University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor
"Twenty Years of American Sculpture", Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Venice Biennale, Venice
"Chicago Chic", Taylor Hall Art Gallery, California State University, Chico
"Made in Chicago", Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Sao Paulo Bienniale, Sao Paulo
"Chicago Imagist Art", Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Pittsburgh International, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh
"Dada, Surrealism and their Heritage", Museum of Modern Art, New York
"Documenta 4", Kassel
"Eight Sculptors: The Ambiguous Image", Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis
"Painting and Sculpture of a Decade: 1954-1964", Tate Gallery, London
"California, Pop Art USA", Oakland Art Museum of California, Oakland
"11 New England Sculptors", Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford
"The Art of Assemblage", Museum of Modern Art, New York
"New Images of Man", Museum of Modern Art, New York