Dennis Hollingsworth

Artist, Soldier

H.C. Westerman

From his obituary by Grace Glueck:

Reviewing the Whitney exhibition, John Russell wrote in The New York Times: ''There is in his work a combination of fiendish invention, boisterousness, naivete and a high-souled ethical overdrive. He never evades a question, and he doesn't mind coming on like an unreconstructed preacher.'' Fought in 2 Wars

The son of an accountant, Horace Clifford Westermann Jr. was born and raised in Los Angeles. A trim, muscular man skilled in gymnastics, he saw combat service as a Marine in World War II, and was hired by the U.S.O. for a year's tour of the Orient as an acrobat. Returning to the United States, he studied commercial art at the Art Institute of Chicago before another stint of combat duty in the Korean War.

Discovering in Korea ''an attraction for the fine arts,'' Mr. Westermann returned to the Art Institute for further study in drawing and painting. To earn money on the side, he worked as a handyman but, discouraged by what he discerned as the lack of interest in quality workmanship on the part of his clients, began to make ''little objects'' at home for his own satisfaction. In 1955, he sold his first construction to the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, from an art show at the home of Ellen Borden Stevenson, former wife of Adlai E. Stevenson.