The Artist’s Environment– West Coast at The Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth,Texas – 1962

Quote from the exhibit: 

“One cannot escape seeing Hansen’s three-legged sculptures as figures, or two figures confronting each other. But this impression is based on only the slightest relevance to anatomy, and were we to be literal minded some of the figures are closer to the animal kingdom. What they all share is animation: the are sentient beings aware and alerted. They have skeletons with some taut muscular system. They are creatures of the kingdom of the imagination and their kinship makes it clear that they are from the imagination of a single artist.

Hansen has built himself his own foundry next to his studio in north Vancouver, Washington, where he casts his large pieces through an improved lost wax process. This serious relationship to bronze shows in the result, one fancies: these strong and successful images have a rigor unrelated to any softer material.”