MA-g
The Museum of Avant-garde

Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman

The Netherlands (1882—1945)

After his first job working as a journalist, Wekman started his printing business in 1908 and in 1919 he joined the association De Ploeg. In 1922 he designed the cover of Blad voor Kunst last issue. With the hand press acquired for his printing business he created his first print series. From 1923 he produced the magazine The Next Call. He experimented with abstract designs using the typesetter: his typestracts or tiksels were included in Seuphor’s Cercle et Carré exhibition in 1930. He also started to produced his sound-poems. In 1937 he published the leaflet for the De Ploeg meeting under the title Dada is dead. With the beginning of WWII his printing business slowed down and he turned his attention to painting. He set up a clandestine publishing house De Blauwe Schuit, which included publications he designed and illustrated. He was executed three days before the liberation of his village in 1945.

Michel Seuphor