Birger Sandzén (Swedish/American, 1871-1954)
The son of a Lutheran minister, Sven Birger Sandzén was born in Bildsberg, Sweden in 1871. As an adult he would become a son of the Midwest, famous for his landscapes of the Rocky Mountains and the Smokey River in Kansas. Sandzén graduated from the College of Skara in Sweden in 1890, then studied at the University of Lund. In 1894 he moved to Kansas to teach at Bethany College in Lindsborg, a Swedish enclave. He remained at Bethany throughout his life, becoming first professor (until 1945), then professor emeritus until his death. He also found time to teach in Denver, at the State Agricultural College in Logan, Utah during the summers of 1928, and as the WPA artist and teacher at the Broadmoor Art Academy in Colorado Springs from 1923-24. His interest in mountain landscapes extended as far as the desert Southwest, and he became a frequent visitor to Santa Fe and Taos as the art colony was emerging there in the early 1900s.
Throughout his life, Sandzén influenced many student artists throughout the Midwest, many of whom became artists and artist/teachers, as well. While respected as an educator, Sandzén was equally revered for his work as a painter, illustrator, engraver, and lithographer. His renderings of the Rocky Mountains in block prints, lithographs, and paintings evoke a Post-Impressionist style that has been compared to Van Gogh or Cezanne. He is described as starting out as a "tonal landscapist," evolving into a Pointilist (ca. 1910), and by 1915, employing great slabs of paint in an "exciting and colorful style." His paintings are in the permanent collections of numerous museums including the Denver Art Museum, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, the Ulrich Museum of Art in Wichita, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery in Lincoln, Nebraska, the Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence, Kansas, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and others.
