Birger Sandzén

Sven Birger Sandzén, known more commonly as Birger Sandzén, was a Swedish painter best known for his landscapes. He produced most of his work while working as an art professor at Bethany College, Lindsborg, Kansas.

Later in 1894, Sandzén accepted a teaching post from Carl Aaron Swensson, President of Bethany College.

He moved to Lindsborg, Kansas which would be his home for the rest of his life. He remained on the faculty for fifty-two years, teaching various languages as well as art in his first year at Bethany. Sandzén would go on to become the head of art at the college until his retirement in 1946. He recommended that his friend Carl Lotave fill an open position at Bethany and with Lotave and N.G. Malm, they started the first exhibition of Swedish-American art. It became the annual Midwest Art Exhibition.

Sandzén was taken with the Smoky Hill River Valley area of central Kansas, which provided much of the subject matter for his paintings. Many of his paintings feature the great landscapes of the American Southwest. Sandzén painted many landscape scenes, including depictions of the Rocky Mountain National Park and Yellowstone National Park, both favorite venues for his work. He also spent considerable time painting landscapes within Kansas. According to curator Bill North, he frequently painted landscapes from Graham County, Kansas, where his wife's parents moved in 1906.

Although most of his works are in oil, Sandzén was also a talented printmaker and watercolorist

Sandzén was highly prolific producing at least 2,890 oil paintings as well as hundreds of different prints and watercolors and drawings.

He adopted a thick, textural, impasto style of painting, with the use of strong colourful brushstrokes. His bold use of stroke and color has been described variously as post-Impressionism, expressionism and fauvism. His woodcuts and linocuts were to have a lasting effect on artists to come. His artwork has been compared to Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2024