​​

Theodore is pleased to offer this selection of works by H C Westermann from the estate of Westermann’s widow Joanna Beall, including a rare opportunity to acquire individual images from “See America First”.

 

H C Westermann (Cliff to his friends) grew up a serious and creative kid in Los Angeles. At 16 he submitted a portfolio of drawings to Walt Disney and was offered a job. He loved comics, radio, books and movies - Westerns, Sci-Fi, Detective yarns and Romance flicks. After serving in the Marines in WWII and Korea, he enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago determined to be an artist. While there, he met his wife Joanna Beall and moved with her to the family home in Connecticut.

 

In 1964 the couple hatched a plan to move to the West Coast, outfitted a pickup they called the Batmobile, and took a long drive across the country camping in the back of the truck. He wrote dozens of his signature letter-drawings to friends and family along the way, amassing a memory bank of images and impressions. “A NEW RESPECT + LOVE FOR THIS COUNTRY AFTER TAKING A LONG TRIP ACROSS IT SLOW!” is inscribed in a letter drawing called “A Tribute to America.”

 

He was invited to Tamarind Workshop in LA in 1968 and distilled his thoughts into a lithographic suite he titled “See America First,” the prewar slogan of a tourism promotion. The series is not a travelogue but a meditation, an amalgam of visions about a country he loved: as it was and as he imagined it could be. But it also evinced a patriotism that was curdling in the face of post-war culture and his growing anti-authoritarianism.

 

The portfolio was comprised of seventeen numbered images and a frontispiece in an edition of twenty, each packed in a handmade wood slipcase. There were a small number of artist’s proofs and trial proofs for each print in the portfolio.

 

The black and yellow landscape with a vignette of Davy Crockett embodies an idea of an untouched environment yielding to manifest destiny; this print is from a small edition of ten independent of the complete portfolio.

 

“Death Ship of No Port” and “Port of Shadows” harken back to his war years. “Elephant’s Graveyard” was prompted by a newspaper photo of the grieving rituals of these intelligent, social animals, and was printed by the artist from two hand-carved woodblocks.

 

The complete suite of “See America First” was published by Tamarind Institute in 1968.  The entire suite was acquired by museums including the Museum of Modern Art.

 

For viewings, purchase, and more information, please contact the gallery theodoreart@gmail.com.