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Hansen Bahia, born Karl Heinz Hansen (Hamburg, Germany, 1915-São Paulo, Brazil, 1978), was a German engraver, artist, and writer active in Brazil after 1950.

Early life
Hansen Bahia spent his childhood in Hamburg, where he studied painting from 1930 to 1933. He then worked in Italy as an ice cream vendor and artist in a traveling circus. Hansen Bahia served as a seaman for the German Reichsmarine (Reich Navy) from 1935 to 1936, then was employed in the fire brigade. He then fought in World War II as a soldier in the German Army until 1945, and was at the Oder front at the end of the war.

Hansen Bahia worked as an illustrator of children's books during the war, an experience that formed the basis of his later artistic work. After the the end of World War II he painted images of the destroyed city of Hamburg and illustrated self-written fairy tales. An exhibition of his work on children's books followed. He created his first woodcut series, Totentanz and Christ and Thomas, between 1946 and 1947.

Emigration to Brazil
Hansen Bahia emigrated to Brazil in 1950 via Norway and England, and worked in for Companhia Melhoramentos in São Paulo. He devoted his career entirely to art after arriving in Brazil, and had his first exhibition of woodcuts at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo under the sponsorship of Pietro Maria Bo Bardi, the husband of the architect Lina Bo Bardi.

1955 was to be a decisive year for Hansen Bahia. He traveled to Salvador da Bahia via an invitation of the art magazine Habitat. He had an exhibition in Bahia, and quit his publishing job to work as a freelance artist. He set up a studio on the beach at Amaralina in Salvador and created a large number of woodcut series and murals for ecclesiastical and secular buildings between 1956 and 1958. He illustrated Flor de São Miguel by Jorge Amado (1912-2001) and Vinicius de Moraes (1913-1980) in 1957. He illustrated Navio Negreiro by Castro Alves (1847-1871) in the following year.

Return to Germany and work in Ethiopia
Hansen returned to Germany in 1959 and founded a summer school for woodcut arts at his workshop at the Tittmoning Castle in Traunstein in 1960. He continued his work on Brazilian themes using large-format woodcuts and published eight books and portfolios. Hansen remained in Bavaria for only four years.

Hansen assumed a professorship at the School of Fine Arts in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The Emperor Haile Selassie put great emphasis on the art school, providing funding, sending students abroad, and hiring foreign instructors. Hansen Bahia was hired to focus on printmaking; he worked at the school with the sculptor Herbert Seiler, the art historian Wendy Kindred, and the paintor Vincenzo Fumo. Hansen Bahia left Ethiopia for Brazil in 1966.

Later life and death
Hansen returned to Salvador and was naturalized as a Brazilian citizen in 1966, adopting the artistic name "Hansen Bahia". He took over the chair for graphics at the Federal University of Bahia in 1967, and also taught at the University of Bogotá, Colombia, and the Escola de Belas Artes in Belo Horizonte. He built a new studio house on the beach in Itapoan, Bahia.

Hansen moved to São Félix, Bahia, in 1970, and lived there until his death, in 1978.

Two years before upon his death, he donates his artistic production in a will to the city of Cachoeira, Bahia, where the Hansen Bahia Foundation is created, which receives his artistic collection of woodcuts, matrices, books, paintings, presses and work tools.