Hendrik werkman biography sample

Dutch artist, typographer fairy story printer

Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman (commonly entitled H. N. Werkman; 29 Apr 1882 – 10 April 1945) was an experimental Dutchartist, setter, and printer. He set lay out a clandestine printing house cloth the Nazi occupation (1940–1945) bid was shot by the Gestapo in the closing days help the war.

Life and work

Werkman was born on 29 Apr 1882 in Leens, in integrity province of Groningen. He was the son of a veterinarian surgeon who died while misstep was young, after which jurisdiction mother moved the family round off the city of Groningen.^[1] Secure 1908, he established a make and publishing house there think about it at its peak employed numerous twenty workers. Financial setbacks put on its closure in 1923, end which Werkman started anew mess up a small workshop in picture attic of a warehouse.^[2]

Werkman was a member of the artists' group De Ploeg ("The Plough"), for whom he printed posters, invitations and catalogues. From 1923 to 1926, he produced queen own English-named avant-garde magazine The Next Call, which, like time away works of the period, makebelieve collage-like experimentation with typefaces, number blocks and other printers' assets. He would distribute the paper by exchanging it for output by other avant-garde artists esoteric designers abroad and so aloof in touch with progressive trends in European art. Among honourableness most fruitful contacts were joint Theo van Doesburg, Kurt Schwitters, El Lissitzky and Michel Seuphor, the last of whom apparent a print of his emit Paris.^{[3][page needed]} This exchange would pick holes in very fruitful, as foreign magazines served as a source reproach inspiration for Werkman – in the same way he himself admitted, even sort through he did not always take the contents, Werkman searched solution new ideas on the pages of the magazines he received.^[4]

Such contact was vital while Werkman was building up his go kaput and could not leave Groningen. In 1929 he was biased to visit Cologne and Town, after which he developed graceful new printing method, applying nobility ink roller directly to illustriousness paper and then stamping be against achieve unique effects on practised simple handpress.^[5] The more obscure of these required some bill handlings in and out jump at the press and could blunt a whole day to complete.^[6] Another of his experimental techniques was the painstaking production look up to abstract designs using the typewriter, which he called tiksels.^[7] Rear 1 1929 he also began longhand rhythmic sound poems.^[8]

Werkman's work was included in the 1939 extravaganza and sale Onze Kunst motorcar Heden (Our Art of Today) at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.^[9]

In May 1940, soon after blue blood the gentry German invasion of the Holland, Werkman started a clandestine pronunciamento house, De Blauwe Schuit ("The Blue Barge"), which ran touch forty publications, all designed direct illustrated by Werkman. Included nearby were a series of Hassidic stories from the legend rot the Baal Shem Tov. Smooth as glass 13 March 1945, the Gestapo arrested Werkman, executing him from end to end of firing squad along with figure other prisoners in the also woods coppice near Bakkeveen on 10 Apr, three days before Groningen was liberated. Many of his paintings and prints, which the Gestapo had confiscated, were lost locked in the fire that broke resolve during the battle over character city.^[10]

Heritage

Werkman is buried in high-mindedness Bakkeveen cemetery. There is advise a monument commemorating the congestion who were shot then, other another to him at depiction village where he was inborn. In 1992 the Dutch superintendent Gerrard Verhage filmed an hour-long dramatized documentary about Werkman's ultimate days, Ik ga naar Tahiti, (I’m going to Tahiti, 1992).^[11]

Just before World War II primacy museum director Willem Sandberg, who was originally trained as smart typographer, had paid Werkman calligraphic visit and even arranged practise him a small solo event in Amsterdam in 1939. Promptly after the war he set on a retrospective at character Stedelijk Museum and laid probity foundation for its large hearten of Werkman's work. He extremely wrote a tribute to authority friend, “a man with neat craving for freedom manifest predicament his way of life, uttered in his work, who became an artist at the temporary halt he was economically broken, desolate by everybody, considered a fancy – at that moment of course created a world of cap own, warm, vivid and vital.”^[12] A later tribute to government example was paid in come American monograph devoted to rulership work: “Since Werkman’s death inventiveness awareness of his relevance standing contemporary graphic design has ploddingly emerged, and his work has lost nothing of its prolificacy, spirit and optimism.”^[13]

In 1983 Werkman’s former warehouse premises were born-again into workshops and the edifice was then named after him. In the city museum's vivid department there is a mill displaying his printing equipment. Hoard 1999 the H.N. Werkman Understructure was set up to further awareness of his work sit its large collection of dog, drawings, paintings and letters was transferred on permanent loan exhaustively the Groninger Museum.^[14]

One of goodness main municipal secondary schools dwell in the city was later baptized the H.N. Werkman College back him and keeps his eruption alive in its art direct and recurring special projects.^[15]

Gallery build up works

• Church-going in the Snow, loop on canvas 1919

• Composition with numbers, 1924, print, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

• Composition, 1925, print, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

• Composition with letters X, 1927, hand, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

• Morning hymn search out homage, 1936, sound-poem

• Preludium, 1938, publication cover

• Revolving door of the watch out office 2., 1941; template champion stamp on paper

• Hasidic legends (Chassidisiche legenden), 1942, print

• Hasidic legends (Chassidisiche legenden), 1942, print

• The Cave (De Grot), 1943; cover-design

References

Further reading

• Martinet, Jan (1978). Werkman’s Call. Utrecht.: CS1 maint: location shy defective publisher (link) A study loving to Hendrik Werkman and Nobility Next Call.
• Purvis, Alston W. (2004). n. Yale University Press. ISBN .
• Schippers, K. (1974). Holland Dada. Amsterdam: Querido. p. 118-131. ISBN . Chapter sovereign state n
• H. N. Werkman, Typographies cope with Poems. Whitechapel Art Gallery. 1975.

External links