Note
Black type designates events in the life of H.C. Westermann.
Orange type refers to contemporary historical and cultural events.
1922
Horace Clifford Westermann, Jr., is born to Florita Lynd Bloom and Horace Clifford Westermann, Sr., in Los Angeles. (Artist is referred to hereinafter as HCW).
1929
New York Stock Exchange experiences a surge of panic selling, combined with an earlier sell-off the previous Thursday, called Black Thursday, this leads to the collapse of the stock market.
1934
HCW enters Hubert Howe Bancroft Junior High School, Los Angeles (will graduate June 25, 1937).
President Roosevelt, through the U.S. Gold Reserve Act, revalues the dollar.
F. Scott Fitzgerald publishes Tender is the Night.
1936
Spanish Civil War begins.
The aircraft carrier U.S.S. Enterprise is launched.
1937
The German zeppelin Hindenburg explodes before docking in Lakehurst, N.J.
HCW enters Fairfax High School, Los Angeles (will graduate June 28, 1940).
Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first feature-length animated film, is released.
1938
HCW builds an addition to the garage of the family home using lumber and bricks, much of which he has salvaged and scavenged. The addition had a concrete slab floor, built-in bookcases flanking a brick fireplace, a pitched roof, and exercise rings hanging from the ceiling.
HCW submits drawings of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” to Disney Studios and is offered a job, but the offer is rescinded when Disney discovers his young age.
1940
HCW enrolls at Los Angeles City College; studies liberal arts.
1941
Japan attacks U.S. naval base at Peal Harbor, Hawaii; U.S. declares war on Japan.
1942
HCW begins employment at Simpson Logging Company in Shelton, Wash.
HCW enlists in the U.S. Marine Corps.
1943
HCW volunteers for duty aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise; soon stationed aboard as private, first class; serves as anti-aircraft machine-gun crewman.
1944
U.S.S. Enterprise participates in the Battle of the Philippine Sea.
D-Day landings take place on the Normandy coast.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944—popularly known as the G.I. Bill—is signed into law.
1945
U.S.S. Enterprise participates in the first strikes on Tokyo.
U.S.S. Enterprise is attacked by a kamikaze plane; HCW shoots the plane as it approaches, deflecting it from midship to the stern; the strike kills 14 men and wounds 34 others.
HCW receives good-conduct citation.
HCW meets and marries Elizabeth Marie Case Flanagan in July; marriage is annulled in September.
Death of President Roosevelt; President Harry S. Truman takes office.
Unconditional surrender of Germany; V-E Day is proclaimed, announcing the end of the war in Europe.
U.S. bomber Enola Gay drops the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.
Japan surrenders; President Truman proclaims V-J Day.
1946
HCW returns to U.S. after two-and-a-half years at sea.
HCW develops hand-balancing act with Wayne Uttley called “Wayne and Westermann.”
Films released include Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life and Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep.
1947
HCW accepted at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) to study graphic and applied arts.
Beginning of the “red scare”: investigations into communist infiltration of organized labor, the federal government, and Hollywood beg in.
1950
HCW re-enlists in the Marine Corps as an infantry private.
President Truman is advised by Senator Joseph McCarthy that State Department is rampant with Communists and Communist sympathizers.
The musical Guys and Dolls premieres on Broadway.
1951
HCW begins service in Korea.
Langston Hughes publishes his poem “Harlem.”
1952
HCW is discharged from the marines with the rank of sergeant, with Korean Service Medal (1 star) and U.N. Ribbon; returns to Chicago.
HCW re-enrolls at the SAIC in the Fine Arts program; begins painting; moves to 25 East Division Street; renovates the building in return for room and board and acquires woodworking skills; earns money through various handyman jobs in the neighborhood.
Bing Crosby Enterprises makes the first video recording on high-definition magnetic tape at one-third the cost of photographic processes.
U.S. explodes first hydrogen bomb.
Dwight D. Eisenhower is elected president of the U.S.
1953
Korean War ends, having claimed the lives of more than 30,000 American soldiers and more than 1,000,000 Korean and Chinese soldiers.
RCA transmits first color television broadcast from Burbank, California.
1954
HCW graduates from SAIC with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree; builds first sculpture, The City.
U.S. Supreme Court rules that segregation by race in public schools constitutes a violation of the fourteenth amendment.
Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is released.
1955
Rosa Parks, an African-American seamstress in Montgomery, Ala., is arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger, marking the beginning of the modern civil rights movement in the U.S.
1956
HCW produces Dismasted Ship.
HCW solo exhibition Sculpture by H. C. Westermann opens at the Rockford College Art Gallery, Rockford, Ill.
Eisenhower is elected to a second term as president of the U.S.
1958
HCW completes Mad House and Memorial to the Idea of Man If He Was an Idea.
Stereo (from stereophonic) records gain popularity in U.S. and abroad.
1959
HCW marries artist Joanna Beall.
HCW completes Angry Young Machine.
Alaska and Hawaii become the forty-ninth and fiftieth states in the U.S.
A Raisin in the Sun, a play written by Lorraine Hansbury, is produced. This is the first drama written by an African-American woman to reach Broadway.
1960
HCW wins a New Talent Award given by Art in America magazine.
Harper Lee publishes the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, which wins the Pulitzer Prize in 1961.
1961
HCW receives $5,000 grant from the National Council on the Arts.
John F. Kennedy is sworn in as president of the U.S.
1962
HCW begins work on his earliest print series Disasters in the Sky; series is completed in 1966/67.
Bob Dylan performs at Folk City in Greenwich Village for first time.
1963
Civil rights leaders organize the “March on Washington”; more than 300,000 people fill the Mall, facing the Lincoln Memorial; Martin Luther King, Jr., delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech.
President Kennedy assassinated in Dallas; Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson takes the Oath of Office aboard Air Force One; Lee Harvey Oswald is arrested for the murder.
1964
HCW completes Walnut Box.
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act.
The Beatles arrive in New York City to begin U.S. tour.
1965
HCW produces Antimobile.
Race riots in the Watts district in Los Angeles end in 35 deaths and $40 million in property damage; four thousand are arrested.
Robert Wise’s The Sound of Music is released.
1966
HCW receives his first formal commission, from the Kansas City Art Institute, to make a series of lithographs.
First artificial heart operation performed by Michael DeBakey.
1967
HCW produces the three-color lithograph Death Ship of No Port and the four-color lithograph Green Planet.
HCW completes Woman from Indianapolis, part of series for Kansas City Art Institute.
Race riots in Detroit.
Beatles release the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band; HCW is among the many artists and celebrities featured on the cover designed by British artist Peter Blake.
1968
Tet Offensive begins in Vietnam; the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, along with other population centers in Vietnam, is attacked by Vietcong commandos during Tet, the Vietnamese New Year.
Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated.
Robert Kennedy is assassinated.
HCW begins an eight-week fellowship at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, where he produces See America First, a series of 17 prints.
HCW retrospective exhibition opens at Los Angeles County Museum of Art; travels to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 1969.
1969
HCW is offered a teaching job at the University of California, Berkeley; he declines.
Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to walk on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission.
The film Easy Rider, directed by Dennis Hopper, is released.
1972
HCW visits the Wright Brothers’ Museum while visiting North Carolina.
HCW work is included in international art exhibition Documenta 5 in Kassel, Germany.
Break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, Washington, D.C.
Richard M. Nixon is re-elected president of the U.S.
1973
HCW work is included in the twelfth São Paolo Bienal; is awarded a $2,500 prize; Stephen Prokopoff, organizer of American pavilion, receives inquiries about HCW from galleries in Austria, Germany, and England.
The most popular TV program is All in the Family.
1974
HCW falls ill and undergoes three weeks of testing at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, New York; later is unable to work due to the effects of heart medication.
President Nixon resigns.
1975
HCW begins the Connecticut Ballroom series of woodcut prints; he completes the series in 1976.
Steven Spielberg’s film Jaws is released.
1976
The U.S. celebrates its bicentennial.
Whitney Museum of American Art’s exhibition 200 Years of American Sculpture opens; HCW is represented in the exhibition by Antimobile and American Death Ship on the Equator.
Jimmy Carter is elected president of the U.S.
1977
HCW builds oak bumpers for his new Jeep truck and bolts a metal figure of Buster Brown to the hood.
George Lucas’s science-fiction film Star Wars is released.
President Carter inaugurates the U.S. Department of Energy in response to the gas crisis.
1978
HCW suffers heart attack and is hospitalized at New York Hospital.
HCW retrospective exhibition opens at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
The world’s first “test-tube” baby, Louise Brown, is born.
1979
The worst nuclear accident in U.S. history occurs at the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor, Harrisburg, Pa.
SAIC grants HCW an honorary doctor of fine arts degree.
HCW attends a mini-reunion in Austin, Tex., of men who served aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise in World War II.
Mob of thousands storms the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran, taking 66 people hostage; the Iran hostage crisis lasts more than a year.
1980
Joan Mondale invites HCW to a dinner with Vice President Walter Mondale in honor of the artists whose works are on display in the Vice President’s residence; Westermanns attend.
Mount St. Helens, in Washington State, erupts.
Ronald Reagan is elected president of the U.S.
1981
American hostages in Iran are released minutes after President Carter leaves office.
HCW completes final sculpture, Jack of Diamonds.
HCW suffers heart attack, dies 3 days later.