Hendrik Werkman

"There the telephone is ringing again - the engine, the machines [of the printing company] that call you with their sounds - those people who honor and tease [you] with their orders and admonitions - the chiefs who ask - the bills that have to be paid - the interest that force you to work."

"GRONINGEN, BERLIN, MOSCOW, PARIS 1923 Start of the violet season Reader As we are convinced that it is not too LATE, we will speak. Time is running, honestly.. ..it has become necessary now to do something, before it is too late There must be witnessing and speaking.. ..Art is everywhere. She is thrown us people on our jackets by the birds. In every infant with weak intestines, the latent seed is laid for an artist.. Our first publication will soon be published. We urgently invite you to become a fellow reader [of the upcoming art-magazine 'The Next Call'].. .. We count on your DEEDS in the white season with the black shadows.."

"I have applied for a pass and I am going to travel through Western Europe for 5 days. [I] start in Cologne and will probably end in Paris. Who cares. In Cologne there is a large exhibition of German painters [especially Die Brücke-artists]. Jan W. [= Jan Wiegers, who knew Kirchner very well since 1920] has been there and animated so much that I'm going there for a while.. ..it seems that Jan wants to come with me. He was so enthusiastic that I suspect to be able to note him as my traveling companion."

"the art-critic has provided the products of my lab with a (new) label: 'abracadabra'.. ..[but] one can not speak about abracadabra-ism, and that is its advantage on all –isms: it doesn't know time and limits and especially not the 'periods of time' [but] only seasons.. ..all -isms are dead, blown away, sprayed in the air, gone (here imagery does not fit, imagery is always wrong) - only for the 'abracadabra' is the future wall, the coming wall in the next house - how much the 'peinture' of other fabrics is curving and folding itself, polished or blown-up, it's all for nothing.. .We are not addressing those offspring but only the artists in this world.."

"hobade he - hobade há, habone de - habone da, tomate pe - tomate pa, coquille ki - coquille ku, trankielje ti - trankielje tu, bombade bè - bombade ba, salate te - salate ta, horbide de - horbide da, sperate ke - sperate ká, hosade de - hosade da, ad fundum hà – ad fundum ho, ho ho ho ho – ha ha ha ha, (dacapo po)"

"The subject reports itself, it is never looked for. Afterwards a small drawing will follow for the color-planes which are determined immediately. These colors will be printed by large logs and updated and enlivened with the hand-roller. For pressing I use an old hand-press with lever (from c. 1800).. .Sometimes it is necessary to press heavily, other times only very light. Sometimes one half of the block is rolled in [with ink] bold, the other half only skimpy. By first printing sometimes the first layer of paint on a piece of paper, a gentle tint appears which is then printed on the original. Another time I print the first print of the paper back on the original.. .As soon as the color-planes have been applied, the first state is reached, so to say.. ..Of course all kinds of side-steps can be made, while working. In case of enlivening the picture - both in terms of color or decoration - the main goal I always keep in mind."

"As paint I use lightfast printing ink, usually pure, but also mixed. Mixing is not difficult at all, it but can happen in very different ways. Secret means are not applied, but I can not work on them, except in solitude (at sunshine). No one works in this way. I believe that no one else can obtain the same color effects, except after a lot of practice and experience. Sometimes one print goes up to 50 times under the printing-press. [I make] Never more than one piece per day."

"Moreover the book 'The Legend of Baal Shem', by Martin Buber gives beautiful images. I have read some chapters from it and the 'Werewolf' among others, has been written very beautifully."

"I have composed here so many prints from the immediate surroundings around me - starting with the chimneys and the pigeons and the passing ships, the staircase, the labyrinth of corridors and doors, the crazy combinations of beams and wooden walls.."

"one print gets born from the other one, and that is exactly the right thing of it - it keeps the mind ready."

"I will keep for you the small drawings that I usually make beforehand. They don't have any artistic value. I just make them to have some grip for the composition of the print.."

"This afternoon I just finished a print which I started Monday. We got a revolving door here in the post office [in the city Groningen] and that's such a nice thing to use."

"For me, life would be worthless if there was not modern art and if I did not had the opportunity to express myself in it anyhow, now that I have gradually found the way I can express myself."

"..not the familiar paradise, but the unknown - somewhere in a continent that hasn’t been discovered yet by anyone from the civilized countries - I have escaped [in his prints!] because it is almost unbearable to be in our world."

"I never have to search for subjects, they come to offer themselves - the right form is not always there immediately and that is why it is good to draw those small sketches beforehand. Otherwise it will become too wild, the work demands great calmness and if I am bound to time - for example when Greet [his wife] thinks that I should come home earlier - [then] it starts thundering, because peace has disappeared."

"Last week we made a bike ride along cornfields with the harvest ready to be brought in. Here and there it was already brought in. Heavily loaded cars rolled back home, and it sounds so nice when the car comes after you.. ..and what a fruit tree loaded with ripening fruit. It is all full of promises and full of mild softness. As you say, it is the late-summer melancholy.. ..moreover one can weep for this dying everywhere on the fields, without any mercy."

"..When I have made some drawings I see them immediately in front of my eyes, enlarged [and] in colors.."

"It was a tough job [the 20 prints of his 'Chassidic Legends']; I have been working effortlessly and incessantly [during 1941-1943]. But it was fascinating and the job gave me also relaxation. Now that it is finished, I can look back on it as a part of my life. I am happy that I have been able to accomplish the work, although there will come critical comments too. You can not escape that, even if you are doing your best best."

"Last Sunday we made a bicycle tour of 80 km. Through the North along the edge of the [[w:Groningen (province|province [Groningen]..]] ..On such a day I get again a lot of impressions which will reappear in altered forms in due time. Beautiful landscapes, nice small roads, beautiful farms, meadows with horses and cattle, birds, water and a lot of sunshine. Mills and towers and trees are breaking the lines of the flat land.."

"At a given moment there comes a time that you kick off everything, the whole mess and relieved you are walking further the path. Then the temptations come: Shouldn't I do this in another way, shall I go back and start to accept that I am a fool. Then bite your teeth firmly and say to yourself: no, stupid fool, don't go back, because what you will lose is profit."

"You are an unknown person in Paris, but you don't have the right to stay unknown for ever, because your work really deserves it to be appreciated by a larger public than that in Groningen."

"[Werkman], the printer-painter.. .. who makes prints, in which the meaning of form and color comes completely into their own.. .In his prints he use the side of the hand-roller to draw with [in ink]. He is ad brake, and he makes a lot of witty raids. In this way he comes to print his 'hot printing', analogous to the current 'hot music'."

"Anyway, it is for sure that Hendrik [Werkman] wasn't absolutely unsuitable for businessman. As so many people he had two personalities, that of the businessman and that of the artist."

"Werkman's fine intuition for purity in art has made him the champion of modern art who fully understood Vincent's statement in [his] letter no. 429: 'Les vrais peintres sont ceux quie ne font pas la couleur locale' (in English: The real painters are those who do not create in local colors)."

"[Hendrik Werkman], a man with a craving for freedom manifest in his way of life, expressed in his work, who became an artist at the moment he was economically broken, deserted by everybody, considered a freak – at that moment he created a world of his own, warm, vivid and vital."

"Remembering the time when I met Werkman in the printing house and saw him working, the memories come back how he cut his templates for example. He used a small razor blade, broken in half and wrapped with a small piece of paper. In his hands it was almost like a pencil stump, making a sketch with it. By drawing his lines with the razor blade he cut the template at the same moment. Sometimes he made a drawing beforehand, but usually he cut directly – and he did very skillfully."

"Since Werkman's death an awareness of his relevance to contemporary graphic design has steadily emerged, and his work has lost nothing of its richness, spirit and optimism."