H.C. Westermann

The enigmatic artist H.C. Westermann (1922–1981) is best know as a sculptor and printmaker with an offbeat, whimsical, and often humorous sensibility. Immediately after serving in World War II, Westermann formed a two-man acrobatics act with the United Service Organization (USO) and toured Asia for a year before settling in Illinois and enrolling in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He had a sense of patriotism and enthusiastically reenlisted in the US Marine Corps in 1950 and served as an infantryman in the Korean War. This experience proved to be a turning point. The senseless violence he witnessed irrevocably altered his view of America, and his newly developed antagonism towards the military would later resurface in his artworks.