Alexander Weygers

Alexander G. Weygers, (October 12, 1901–July 23, 1989), was a polymath American artist who is best known as a sculptor, painter, print maker, philosopher, and author. He was born in Java, Indonesia, to Dutch parents. Gaining his formal education in the Netherlands, Weygers was a practicing engineer when he immigrated to the United States of America at the age of 30 to take residence in Seattle.

His first wife, whom he had married in Holland, died after they relocated. He then began to study art, 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. [cite web |url=http://www.alexweygers.com/Alexbio.html |title=Alexander Weygers: The Man |work=Alex Weygers: A Modern Renaissance Man ]

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.

Biography

His parents owned and operated a sugar plantation and a hotel in Java and his mother taught literature and several languages. 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 was graduated from Groningen Politechnicum in mechanical engineering and from the University of Dordrecht in shipbuilding. He married a Dutch woman and they immigrated to the Seattle, Washington, USA where he was employed as an engineer. Unfortunately, his first wife died in 1931 during childbirth—along with their only child. This is when Weyger decided to study sculpture in Chicago in order to change the direction of his life—following the interests that he loved the most.

Marian Weygers, his second wife, was 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 painting and design that is called sumi-e in Japan. 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 still resides in Carmel Valley and is very active in environmental and civic issues.

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.” [cite web |url=http://www.alexweygers.com/BlacksmithBook.html |title=Alexander Weygers: The Books |work=Alex Weygers: A Modern Renaissance Man ]

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". [cite web |url=http://www.alexweygers.com/Message.html |title=Alexander Weygers: His Message |work=Alex Weygers: A Modern Renaissance Man ] 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.alexweygers.com/