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Biography

Horace Clifford Westermann was born in Los Angeles in 1922. After service in the Marines during WWII and in Korea, Westermann completed his studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1954. He was given his first solo exhibition in 1958 at Allan Frumkin Gallery, the gallery that went on to represent him for more than twenty years both in Chicago and New York. Westermann has been the subject of five museum retrospective exhibitions, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1968, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York in 1978, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in 2001, the Fondazione Prada, Milan in 2017 and most recently at the Reina Sofia, Madrid in 2019. Westermann lived and worked in Brookfield Center, Connecticut from 1961 until his death in 1981 at Danbury Hospital, following a heart attack at age 58.

Curriculum Vitae

Essays & Interviews

Group PR summer 1968
Press Release for Summer Exhibition
Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York, 1968

Group exhibitions have been a summer staple of the New York art scene for decades - an opportunity for lighter fare during the hottest days of the year.

Letter from William T. Wiley to H. C. Westermann c. 1966
Letter from William T Wiley to H. C. Westermann
circa December 1966

In 1958, the sculptor Jeremy Anderson showed two of his students a catalogue of work by H. C. Westermann, whose sculpture Anderson was familiar through their shared dealer, Allan Frumkin. The experience was revelatory to the two young artists, Robert Hudson and William T. Wiley and would impact their careers in different ways.

On H. C. Westermann
On H. C. Westermann
Exploring the man, the artist and his legacy October 2021

In conjunction with our current exhibition of works on paper by H. C. Westermann: Le Bandeur, we spoke to a range of people who knew Westermann in life or through his work, about who he was as a person, an artist and why his work continues to resonate, thirty years after his death at the age of 59.

Human Fly
An Enduring Legacy
George Adams on H. C. Westermann and his lasting influence June 2021

The gallery’s legacy going back to 1952 is inextricably linked to  H. C. Westermann. There is no way to overstate his impact on the gallery both in terms of his art and his personality; both are equivalent.

Curator Patterson Sims in the studio of H.C. Westermann 1977
Curator Patterson Sims Visiting H. C. Westermann’s Studio
Brookfield Center, Connecticut, December 1976

Sims, the recently appointed curator of the collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art paid a visit to Westermann’s Connecticut studio in December of 1976 to look at new work.