As one of the most important sculptors in Germany, Erich Hauser has played a significant role in the development of plastic art in the second half of the 20th century, both as a pioneer through his unmistakable independence, as well as his inimitable "craftsmanship" quality. Already since 1969 documented by his winning the Grand Prize at the X. Biennale in São Paulo an international appreciation. In the 1970s he advanced to become one of the most successful sculptors in public space in the Federal Republic of Germany. His works are correspondingly widespread in Germany and abroad, for example in the Chancellor's Office in Bonn, at the stock exchange in Düssel-dorf, in the Goethe Institute in Tokyo, in the Expo grounds in Hanover and in several public places in Stuttgart.
Since 1962 Erich Hauser has used exclusively industrially prefabricated steel plates for his sculptures, which he makes pliable by partial heating and welds together according to the principle of assembly. In contrast to his works created before 1967, which still show clear, sometimes harsh traces of processing that cover the surfaces like scars, the later sculptures have a highly polished, flawless outer skin. While his works from the mid-1960s onward are formally reminiscent of vegetative, organically grown forms, the sculptures of the following years are predominantly oriented toward geometric forms, such as the column, the tube, the pyramid, the cylinder, the cuboid, the discus, or the cube. Since the 1970s, Hauser has increasingly broken up the basic geometric forms, revealing glimpses of them and allowing them to penetrate into the outside space without losing their formal coherence. Finally, crystalline steel structures emerge from which new spatial constellations grow.
With his sculptures, Hauser illustrates nature as an interplay of forces, its dynamics sometimes reaching far, especially vertically into space. Common to all sculptural works is a cubist-like decomposition, a decay or shattering. The sculptures of the 1980s in particular resemble prismatic formations, splinters, or frozen still images of an explosion. Hauser's sculptures remain throughout artificially created entities that retain their material character, which the sculptor himself expresses as follows: "I am interested in setting forms against nature. This makes it possible to see and experience nature in a new way. ... The dimension is also determined by what is humanly graspable; that is, as far as I can read, think through and master the space."