Born in 1922, Horace Clifford "H.C." Westermann was raised in Los Angeles, California. He served as a Marine in both World War II and the Korean War. Westermann studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and supplemented his income through employment as a woodworker and carpenter. His love for the craft of woodworking led him to become a full-time artist ultimately. Westermann produced a variety of works, including woodcuts, paintings, drawings, and collages, but he is best known for his highly detailed and impeccably finished wood sculptures and constructions.

During his lifetime, Westermann never explained the meaning behind his art, but it is quite evident that he was heavily influenced by his intense wartime experiences and his complicated feelings concerning the human condition. Much of his oeuvre can be interpreted as a critique of the American military and consumer culture. In particular, certain Westermann paintings, drawings, and illustrated correspondence point clearly to his views.

Ahead of his time, Westermann's output was a great influence on artists from the 1960s and 1970s, including the Chicago Imagists and California Funk artists William T. Wiley and Ken Price. Westermann died in Danbury, Connecticut in 1981 at the age of fifty-eight. In the decades since, major retrospectives have been held at a range of institutions, several of which have Westermann's works in their collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC.