Hansen, Vilhelm - the original Petzi artist!

Danish comic artist Vilhelm Hansen can best be descriped as Denmark's Hergé. As the original artist on Petzi, his Works has been admired and read all over the World. Vilhelm Hansen was a trained lithographist who worked as an advertising artist between the two World Wars. He started illustrating his wife Carla's children's books in the 1940s. He also started the weekly comic strip 'Firlingerne' ('The Quadruplets') for the magazine Hjemmet. Vilhelm and Carla Hansen (1906-2001) began their famous animal comic 'Rasmus Klump' ('Petzi' is several other European languages) as a daily comic in 1951. This series, telling the adventures of a penguin, a pelican, a turtle and a seal, is one of the most successful children's comics in the world. It has been translated into several European and Asian languages and was adapted into a series of animated cartoons. Hansen drew the daily comic until the 1960s, when he was succeeded by Tove Nørgaard, and then in the 1980s by Ole Munk Rasmussen and Paul Arne Kring. Unfortunately, seen from a collector's view, all the original Petzi artwork belongs to the Publisher Egmont and will never be sold. Other original art by Vilhelm Hansen is incredibly rare - this is the first time ever that these drawings are offered for sale at a gallery.