Robert Hansen

Robert Hansen was an American painter known for his use of industrial paint on panels. Hansen primarily worked in a black-and-white color palette but occasionally integrated warmer tones into his figurative abstractions. Born in 1924 in Osceola, NE, he served in the US Army between 1943 and 1945 during World War II, transporting art collections to safe storage locations. When he returned to America, Hansen studied art at the University of Nebraska and later received his MFA from the Escuela de Bellas Artes in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. During his time in Mexico, Hansen attended a lecture given by the famed muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros, who introduced the artist to using paint made for appliances and automobiles. In 1961, Hansen received a Guggenheim Fellowship and traveled to India. In the decades that followed, he held teaching positions at both the University of Hawaii and later Occidental College in Los Angeles. The artist died on February 10, 2013 in Carpinteria, CA. Today, Hansen’s works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.