Henry Pierre Villierme (August 21, 1928 – March 13, 2013) was an American Californian painter associated with abstract expressionism and the Bay Area Figurative Movement. Villierme was considered one of the "Second Generation" members of the Bay Area Figurative Movement. Villierme first rose to prominence with a series of successful exhibitions in the late 1950s. From the 1960s to the 1980s Villierme continued to paint and sculpt in his studio, and in the late 1980s returned to public exhibitions. Biography Henry Villierme was born in San Francisco in 1928. His father, Louis Justin Henri Faustin Villierme (Tahiti, 1904 – San Francisco, 1967), was member of a French family from Lorient, Brittany, which had settled in Tahiti, French Polynesia, and who later moved to San Francisco. After the premature death of his mother Emilia, he was, together with his two younger brothers, entrusted to an aunt to raise him in his father's French family in Tahiti, French Polynesia; he returned to the Bay Area for his higher education in 1939. Henry Villierme spoke French due his paternal family origin. Villierme served in the United States Army in the Korean War, as a medic on the front line, and he was awarded the Bronze Star by the United States Army in 1951. Upon returning to the United States and discharge from the Army, he enrolled in the California College of Arts and Crafts under the G.I. Bill. In Oakland, at the California College of Arts & Crafts, he met Barbara Albers in 1953, and they married in 1954. They raised four children, Frank, Julianne, Paul and Claudia. They moved to Southern California in the late fifties, where they stayed, living successively in Hermosa Beach, then in Ojai. Henry passed away on March 13, 2013. Artwork Villierme credited his initial interest in art to "working in a paint store and working out interior color schemes". He also credited his time in the Far East, where he was excited by the look of Japan, as well as "the concern for art values" that was part of the Japanese people's way of life." At the California College of Arts and Crafts Villierme studied under David Park, Harry Krell, Elmer Bischoff, and Richard Diebenkorn, the latter having commented on Henry Villierme's “instinctual understanding” of the art of painting. Outside of the Bay Area Figurative Movement, one of Henry Villierme's early influences at CCAC was the Japanese