Armin Hansen (1886-1957)Spirit of the Rodeo signed 'ARMIN HANSEN' (lower right) and signed again, titled and inscribed 'Monterey - Cal.' (on a paper label affixed to the frame), titled and dated 'Apr. 18' (on the frame)oil on canvas33 1/2 x 40 in.framed 38 x 45 in.Footnotes:ProvenancePrivate collection, Oregon.ExhibitedLos Angeles, Stendahl Art Galleries, Ambassador Hotel, Oil Paintings, Water Colors and Etchings by Armin Hansen, A.N.A., April-May 1930.Monterey, Del Monte Art Gallery, Hotel Del Monte, Exhibition of Paintings by Armin Hansen A.N.A., June-July 1930.Carmel-by-the-Sea, Carmel Art Association, Exhibition of National Academicians Paul Dougherty and William Ritschel and Associate National Academicians Arthur Hill Gilbert and Armin Hansen, August-September 1931.Monterey, Del Monte Art Gallery, Hotel Del Monte, exhibition of twenty-four paintings, May 1938.Carmel-by-the-Sea, Carmel Art Association, September-October 1938.Carmel-by-the-Sea, Carmel Art Association, December 1946.LiteratureScott A. Shields, Armin Hansen: The Artful Voyage, Pasadena Museum of California Art, 2015, pp. 191, 227, 245-6, 253, 255.Though Armin Hansen is best known as a marine painter, he painted and etched the Salinas Rodeo numerous times, beginning in 1913 when a friend took him to the event for the first time. 1 In 1927, a Carmel Pine Cone journalist wrote of his rodeo subjects, 'Odd that a painter of North Sea fishing boats should so capture the spirit of a Salinas bucking broncho! Yet Armin Hansen has done that very thing and I, for one, have never looked at a finer result.' 2 Hansen formally trained as a painter in San Francisco and Europe. After his artistic education, he worked as a crew member on North Sea trawlers while painting fishing scenes, maritime seascapes, and picturesque villages along the coast. His experience with the resilient and hardworking seafaring community, and later with the cowboys who participated in the rodeo, became repeated themes in his artistic representations. By the 1920s, Hansen was working full time as an in-demand artist, exhibiting regularly, and making a good living as a painter. The stock market crash of 1929, however, impacted Hansen like it did with so many Americans. Not only did his savings disappear, so did his patronage. In late November of that year, he wrote to his Los Angeles dealer Earl Stendahl, 'When last I wrote you I was just about broke--now I am.' In an effort to survive the difficult Depression years, Hansen actively exhibited, took on portrait and mural commissions, and painted 'everything, anything' to make ends meet. Los Angeles Times critic Arthur Millier noted the broadened array of his work, writing 'Hansen comes ashore, too, and paints or etches a rodeo or the hills back from Monterey. And he has gentle moments when he paints delicate still lifes of glass and tableware.' In 1930, Hansen reintroduced the rodeo subject in a Stendahl Gallery exhibition, that included the present painting, Spirit of the Rodeo, that was priced at $2,000. 3 Despite the majority of marine subjects in the show, a Los Angeles Record reviewer declared that Hansen had 'gone western.' 4 ''Fascinating in its abstractness', the dynamic composition [of Spirit of the Rodeo] conveyed the impression of speed and captured the color and atmosphere of the sport. For some, it was like a dance between horses and riders, with their forms blurred by whirling dust.' 5Spirit of the Rodeo is a figure-filled composition diagonally divided by shadow in the lower half, and sunlight in the upper half. Cowboys decked in ten-gallon hats, chaps, and many wearing red bandanas around their necks, walk and talk alone and in groups. Most of the cowboys seem unconcerned with the bronco in their midst, its head down, body tense, ready to buck, except the cowboy behind the horse who seems to be in mid-jump attempting to get out of harm's way. Hansen presents a masterful snapshot of the rodeo that capture's the atmosphere of the event, both in terms of the literal dusty brown haze kicked up by the horses, the swirls of paint that seem to be loops of circling rope, and the bold colors of the cowboy's outfits, but also in the comradery of the participants. As he does in many of his rodeo subjects, Hansen obscures areas of the composition, enhancing the sense of spur-of-the-moment movement and action. Hansen's best work, like the present painting, always tread at the edge of speed and fidelity to his subject without overworking his material. This aggressive and confident style is often reflected in the intrepidness of his subjects.1 Scott A. Shields, Armin Hansen: The Artful Voyage, Pasadena Museum of California Art, 2015, p. 191.2 as quoted in Shields, p. 191.3 Ibid., p. 227.4 Ibid., p. 191.5 Ibid., p. 191.