Biografie von Horace Clifford WESTERMANN (1922-1981)

Birth place: Los Angeles, CA

Addresses: Brookfield Center, CT, 1973

Profession: Sculptor

Studied: AIC, 1947-50, 195; also with Paul Weighardt.

Exhibited: Surrealist Art, MoMA, 1960; Eight Sculptors, The Ambiguous Image, Walker Art Ctr., Minneapolis, 1966; LACMA, 1968 (retrospective); Mus. Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1969; Documenta, Germany, 1970 & 1972; WMAA. Awards: Nat. Arts Council, 1967.

Work: WMAA; AIC; LACMA

Comments: An eclectic artist and master carpenter whose work shares ideas and forms found in Dada/Surrealism, Primitivism, and Minimalism. In 1952 Westermann began his carved Death Ship series, also making other war-related pieces that dealt with death and violence (he served in the Pacific in WWII and in the Korean War). Beginning in 1955 he made the first of many miniature houses in wood, with glass, mirror, metal, or found-object additions. In his glass-front box constructions and cabinets, he has often juxtaposed and transformed odd forms and ideas and explored visual parodoxes and puns. Preferred media: laminated woods, metals.

Sources: WW73; Baigell, Dictionary; Two Hundred Years of American Sculpture, 319-20; Max Kozloff, H. C. Westermann (exh. cat. LACMA, 1968).