American abstractionist and abstract calligrapher Saburo Hasegawa. Villierme graduated from CCAC with a Bachelor's Degree in Painting. Villierme also took several courses at the California School of Fine Arts (San Francisco Art Institute), where his peers included Robert Downs, Manuel Neri, and Bruce McGaw. Villierme's art showed promise early on. In August 1957 Villierme won Second Award at the Jack London Square Art Festival for his painting "Highway". In November, his painting "Lake View" took First Place at the 7th Annual Exhibition Oil and Sculpture at the Richmond Art Center, with honorable mentions going to Richard Diebenkorn, Nathan Oliveira, and David Park. Villierme was invited to display in "The Next Direction", an exhibition sponsored by the Oakland Art Museum and which also featured works by McGaw, Park, Bischoff, and Diebenkorn. He later went on to win a prize aware at the Los Angeles County Museum 1958 Annual Exhibition – Artists of Los Angeles and Vicinity, for his piece "Landscape". Villierme's works were also featured in exhibitions at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Art. Villierme's work is typically realistic, and his most frequent subjects are great rolling landscapes typical of California's Central Valley. He is also known for his portraits and still lifes, which are generally done on smaller, one-square-foot canvases. He worked from sketches he made on the spot, which he put aside for a month or more before he painted from them. His approach is often considered pointillist and cubist. In 1992, Richard Diebenkorn said of Villierme, "(Villierme's) painting had, and still has, instinctual understanding of that universal human activity in which colors are applied to a surface." In the late 1950s Henry Villierme and his wife left the Bay Area for Southern California to raise their family. Richard Diebenkorn later said, responding to Villierme's decision, "Of all the painting students at the California College of Arts and Crafts who might have abandoned his direction, Henry was one whose defection could hit me the hardest." In the late 1980s Villierme began a comeback that culminated with the 2005 Bay Area Figurative 1950s and 1960s exhibit at the Bolinas Museum in Bolinas, California. Exhibitions Jack London Square Art Festival. August 1957. Oakland, CA. "Highway" (Second Award). California College of Arts and Crafts 50th Anniversary. M.H. de Young Memorial Museum. San Francisco, CA. 7th Annual Exhibition Oil and Sculpture at the Richmond Art Center.