At twenty years of age, after attending two years at the Los Angeles City College, Horace Clifford (H.C.) Westermann enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. The year was 1942, and he served aboard the U.s.s.. Enterprise stationed in the Pacific throughout World War II. After the war he briefly attended classes at the Art Institute of Chicago before re-enlisting to serve during the Korean War. He completed his education at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1954. His first solo exhibition was held at Allan Frumkin Gallery in 1958. Allan Frumkin would continue to represent Westermann until his death in 1981. Allan Frumkin had exhibition spaces in New York and Chicago under various names, permanently closing in 1995. The unique works of H.c. Westermann harken to the scrimshaw works of sailors, the whittling wooden works of craftsmen, and tattoo imagery. These areas of what was later dubbed Low-Brow arts are the underlying thread in his diverse array of artistic expression. His renegade style influenced many younger artists, namely the Hairy Who, and to a broader extent the Chicago Imagists. Westermann's work has been exhibited in major museum shows, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1968, the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1978, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 2001, the Fondazione Prada, Milan, 2017, and the Reina Sofia, Madrid in 2019.
