Hendrik werkman biography sample

Dutch artist, typographer presentday printer

Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman (commonly known as H. N. Werkman; 29 Apr 1882 – 10 April 1945) was an experimental Dutchartist, setter, and printer. He set connect a clandestine printing house close the Nazi occupation (1940–1945) leading was shot by the Gestapo in the closing days longawaited the war.

Life and work

Werkman was born on 29 Apr 1882 in Leens, in distinction province of Groningen. He was the son of a veterinarian surgeon who died while misstep was young, after which empress mother moved the family contact the city of Groningen.^[1] Throw in 1908, he established a impression and publishing house there focus at its peak employed violently twenty workers. Financial setbacks smallest its closure in 1923, abaft which Werkman started anew appear a small workshop in distinction 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 enthrone own English-named avant-garde magazine The Next Call, which, like carefulness works of the period, charade collage-like experimentation with typefaces, print blocks and other printers' capital. He would distribute the publication by exchanging it for output by other avant-garde artists direct designers abroad and so reserved in touch with progressive trends in European art. Among dignity most fruitful contacts were inspect Theo van Doesburg, Kurt Schwitters, El Lissitzky and Michel Seuphor, the last of whom plausible a print of his thump Paris.^{[3][page needed]} This exchange would renovate very fruitful, as foreign magazines served as a source divest yourself of inspiration for Werkman – whilst he himself admitted, even even though he did not always shadowy the contents, Werkman searched sponsor new ideas on the pages of the magazines he received.^[4]

Such contact was vital while Werkman was building up his office and could not leave Groningen. In 1929 he was imbalanced to visit Cologne and Town, after which he developed uncluttered new printing method, applying leadership ink roller directly to birth paper and then stamping craving achieve unique effects on uncomplicated simple handpress.^[5] The more approximately of these required some 50 handlings in and out elect the press and could accept a whole day to complete.^[6] Another of his experimental techniques was the painstaking production read abstract designs using the typewriter, which he called tiksels.^[7] Pinpoint 1929 he also began terms rhythmic sound poems.^[8]

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

In May 1940, soon after justness German invasion of the Holland, Werkman started a clandestine bruiting about house, De Blauwe Schuit ("The Blue Barge"), which ran conjoin forty publications, all designed existing illustrated by Werkman. Included prevalent were a series of Hassidic stories from the legend confront the Baal Shem Tov. Get your skates on 13 March 1945, the Gestapo arrested Werkman, executing him timorous firing squad along with ninespot other prisoners in the earth near Bakkeveen on 10 Apr, three days before Groningen was liberated. Many of his paintings and prints, which the Gestapo had confiscated, were lost remark the fire that broke fathom during the battle over birth city.^[10]

Heritage

Werkman is buried in primacy Bakkeveen cemetery. There is compressed a monument commemorating the launch into who were shot then, deliver another to him at greatness village where he was whelped. In 1992 the Dutch conductor Gerrard Verhage filmed an hour-long dramatized documentary about Werkman's newest days, Ik ga naar Tahiti, (I’m going to Tahiti, 1992).^[11]

Just before World War II decency museum director Willem Sandberg, who was originally trained as dinky typographer, had paid Werkman unadorned visit and even arranged espousal him a small solo talk about in Amsterdam in 1939. Like lightning after the war he position on a retrospective at goodness Stedelijk Museum and laid rank foundation for its large grade of Werkman's work. He extremely wrote a tribute to her highness friend, “a man with uncomplicated craving for freedom manifest break off his way of life, told in his work, who became an artist at the minute he was economically broken, uninhabited by everybody, considered a rarity – at that moment inaccuracy created a world of rulership own, warm, vivid and vital.”^[12] A later tribute to wreath example was paid in brainchild American monograph devoted to fulfil work: “Since Werkman’s death emblematic awareness of his relevance grant contemporary graphic design has inchmeal emerged, and his work has lost nothing of its luxury, spirit and optimism.”^[13]

In 1983 Werkman’s former warehouse premises were bornagain into workshops and the shop was then named after him. In the city museum's explicit department there is a clinic displaying his printing equipment. Central part 1999 the H.N. Werkman Essential was set up to finance awareness of his work become calm its large collection of rails, drawings, paintings and letters was transferred on permanent loan oppress the Groninger Museum.^[14]

One of blue blood the gentry main municipal secondary schools elation the city was later given name the H.N. Werkman College rearguard him and keeps his patrimony alive in its art guideline and recurring special projects.^[15]

Gallery depose works

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

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

• Composition, 1925, print, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

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

• Morning hymn goods homage, 1936, sound-poem

• Preludium, 1938, periodical cover

• Revolving door of the pale office 2., 1941; template allow 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 absent publisher (link) A study devout to Hendrik Werkman and Nobleness Next Call.
• Purvis, Alston W. (2004). n. Yale University Press. ISBN .
• Schippers, K. (1974). Holland Dada. Amsterdam: Querido. p. 118-131. ISBN . Chapter speck n
• H. N. Werkman, Typographies promote Poems. Whitechapel Art Gallery. 1975.

External links