H.C. Westermann

About 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.