Alexander Weygers
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Alexander Weygers | |
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| Born | Alexander George Weijgers October 12, 1901 |
| Died | July 23, 1989 |
| Nationality | Dutch |
| Known for | painter, print maker, philosopher, and author |
Alexander George (Alex) Weygers, (October 12, 1901–July 23, 1989), was a polymath Dutch-American artist who is best known as a sculptor, painter, print maker, philosopher, and author.
Biography
Weygers was born in Mojokerto, Dutch East Indies, where his Dutch parents, Albert Weijgers en Johanna van Leenhoff, owned and operated a sugar plantation and a hotel. His mother taught literature and several languages at a high school in Surabaya. Alex inherited his mother's linguistic talents and his father instilled a deep love of nature, design, and ecology into him as he accompanied his father on botanical explorations in Java and Indonesia.
In 1916, his prosperous parents sent him to Holland to study. First he attended a secondary school where, among other things, he studied the discipline of blacksmithing—which he often referred to as the "mother craft" of all civilization. He graduated from Hanze University of Applied Sciences, Groningen in mechanical engineering and from a Dordrecht vocational university in shipbuilding. He also briefly attended the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. Weygers returned to Java in 1923, and his fiancee, Jacoba Hutter, joined him there from Holland in 1924, where they married. Jacoba could not adjust to the tropical climate and they emigrated to the United States in 1930 to take residence in Seattle, where he was employed as an engineer. In 1931, Jacoba died during childbirth—along with their only child.
Devastated by the death of his wife, Weygers decided to abandon engineering for art. He studied at the Chicago Art Institute, where he was taught by the sculptor, Lorado Taft. Following that he studied various aspects of art in the European centers that were renowned for the areas that interested him. Moving to California in the 1930s, he established a studio in Berkeley and began teaching.
In 1941 he entered the U.S. Army and his command of Malay, Dutch, Italian, German, and English led to his assignment to the intelligence operations.
He received a patent from the U.S. Patent Office for his "discopter" in 1943 and his design has served as the prototype for other similar disk and hovering aircraft that have been developed up to the present day.
During his service in the army he was given a Carmel Valley property where, over several decades, he and his new wife, Marian, would build a retreat with a residence and studios, while he pursued his career teaching at Berkeley.
Marian Weygers, his second wife, had graduated from the University of California at Berkeley as an art major where she worked and studied under Chiura Obata, who taught her the ink wash painting and design. She developed a print making process that she named, imprints from nature, using natural materials such as flowers, leaves, and grass as well as rocks and insects.
Alex and Marian Weygers relocated to the Monterey Peninsula in the 1960s and settled into their former retreat in Carmel Valley that then served as their home and studios. This was the location of his death at the age of eighty-seven. Marian remained very active in environmental and civic issues in Carmel Valley until her death in 2008.
Artistic career
In 1937 Alexander Weygers was recognized with a solo exhibition at the Cliff Hotel in San Francisco and was featured at the Oakland Art Gallery. His work was accepted into the San Francisco Art Association (SFAA) exhibitions of 1937 and 1938.
The San Francisco Chronicle which began a discussion of Weygers by stating that they were "never given to idle flattery", stated that "Alexander Weygers as a modern Leonardo da Vinci..." and continued, "...He commands attention because he is a success by any standard of excellence in half a dozen professions... a sculptor of heroic dimensions, an inventor, a marine, mechanical, and aeronautic engineer, an artist with a camera, a designer and illustrator, and a virtuoso practitioner of endgrain half-tone wood engraving. He is also blacksmith, machinist, carpenter, electrician, plumber, toolmaker, and beekeeper. He is further a teacher and a reluctant prophet upon whom the admiring descend."
Before 1940 his work was included in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and was recognized as an artist of national significance.
Published works
Besides his artwork in sculpture, painting, photography, and wood engraving he is a published author in as diverse fields as philosophy, blacksmithing, and the creation of tools. Some of his most popular titles are The Modern Blacksmith, The Making of Tools, and The Recycling, Use, and Repair of Tools, the first is sometimes described as "the bible" of blacksmiths. All of these have been compiled into a publication released in 1997 under the title, The Complete Modern Blacksmith.
Philosophy
Weygers philosophical view was agnostic and he asserted that "Truth" was the source of life—being defined as the forces and concise designs inherent in Nature and her works. One of his students, Peter B. Partch, states that Weygers equated Nature with the concepts of deity among human cultures, and defined Nature as "the all-encompassing truth motivating all universal unseen forces, being self-governing and creating rock, plant, and animal evolution bound". Further, he relates that Weygers advocated that one should "live life to the fullest", by which he meant doing what one desires in life "for the love of it" rather than for fame or financial gain. Through living simply, and in accordance with his philosophy, each would gain the ultimate freedom possible and produce actions and works of great merit—adhering to a discipline that included learning how to continuously reduce reliance upon material needs. Weygers advocated the reuse of waste materials cast off as useless trash by contemporary societies by adapting them to other needs or making artistic creations with them. Recycling is the current term for his concept.
References
- Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940"
- http://www.fineartspot.com/artists/w/alexanderg_weygers.php
External links
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