This fall, the Seattle Art Museum will present a 30-year retrospective of the Eastern Washington-based painter Gaylen Hansen (b.1921). Gaylen Hansen: Three Decades of Painting will include approximately 35 works tracing his evolution as an artist and will be on view at SAM Downtown Oct. 11, 2007 through Jan 6, 2008.
Gaylen Hansen: Three Decades of Painting takes viewers through the artist’s oeuvre from the 1970s to the present. Hansen first came to the attention of the art world during the heyday of neo-expressionism in the late 1970s, and has been much celebrated for his paintings of the eastern Washington landscape, his focus since 1957, when he left Southern California to settle in Palouse, Washington. Populated by animals, insects, trout, and a cowboy named Kernal Bentleg, Hansen’s paintings are humorous and dreamlike. Hansen, 85, said he chronicles what amuses and interests him most – fly fishing, the surrounding rural land and the animals that populate it, and his environmental concerns.
The retrospective catalogue also includes an engaging interview with the artist and a highly personal selection of more than 20 of his paintings—most never publicly shown—along with some old favorites. Among them are The Kernal Encounters a Swarm of Crickets (1983), Bison, Fish & Tulip (1994), and 12 Balls (2003).
“Hansen achieves the difficult artistic balance between a serious and history-laden approach and the personal touch of humor and narrative that makes his art accessible and enjoyable to art connoisseurs and everyday viewers alike,” says Michael Darling, SAM’s Jon and Mary Shirley Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. “His work reveals him to be an artist of vast talent and emotional range following in the tradition of great American artists such as H.C. Westermann and Philip Guston.”
Born in Utah, Hansen attended Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, Utah State University, the Art Barn School of Fine Arts and the Salt Lake City Art Center. In 1953, he earned a master’s degree in fine arts from the University of Southern California. He is the recipient of the 1989 Governor’s Award from the State of Washington and the 2001 Flintridge Foundation Visual Arts Award. He has exhibited his paintings in New York, Berlin, Singapore, Beijing, Los Angeles, Seattle and other cities across the United States.
Gaylen Hansen: Three Decades of Paintings has been organized and distributed by the Museum of Art / Washington State University, Pullman, WA. Major funding for this exhibition is provided by the Robert Lehman Foundation. Additional funding is provided by the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, and Nancy and Paul Winlesky. Support for the Seattle presentation is generously provided by PONCHO and The Jon & Mary Shirley Foundation. -- www.seattleartmuseum.org
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