Biography from Thomas Nygard Gallery:
| SVEN BIRGER SANDZÉN (1871-1954)
Birger Sandzen had a long distinguished career as an art professor at Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas and as an impressionist landscape painter. He is best known for his modernist style with masses of paint, akin to that of Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Cezanne, and for Rocky Mountain Landscape subjects. His early work is Tonalist in style in the manner of Scandanavian Romanticism, but after he began taking trips to Colorado, his work became much more Expressionist and brightly colored.
Sven Birger Sandzen was born in Blidsberg, Sweden to Clara Elizabeth and Johan Peter Sandzen. His mother had studied drawing and his father, a minister, enjoyed writing poetry and playing the violin. When Birger’s parents noticed his artistic inclination, they asked a young minister to give drawing lessons to the nine year old. At the age of ten, he attended the College and Academy of Skara. Here his drawing and painting lessons continued under Olof Erlandsson, a graduate of the Royal Academy at Stockholm. After graduation from Skara College, Sandzen spent a semester at Lund University attending art history lectures and continuing the study of French. Following Lund University he went to the technical high school at Stockholm, where he studied perspective and form drawing. Sandzen joined a group of young artists and they rented a studio at Anders Zorn’s suggestion. They received instruction from Anders as well as Richard Bergh, a well-known portrait painter and Per Hasselberg, one of Sweden’s best sculptors. A doctor from the Caroline Medical Institute of Stockholm gave anatomy lessons. These young artists formed “The Art School of the Artists’ League” which played an important part in the development of modern Swedish art.
In the summer of 1894 Sandzen returned to Sweden where he read the book entitled I Sverige by a young Swedish-American educator, Dr. Carl A. Swensson. Dr. Swensson, a college president, told of his struggles on the plains of Kansas and he challenged other young Swedes to come help him. Sandzen was excited by the proposition and wrote Dr. Swensson a letter asking if he could use a young artist who could sing tenor and teach French. As soon as Sandzen received the cable offering him a job, he accepted and arrived in Lindsborg, Kansas the day college opened in the fall.
Birger soon realized Lindborg was where he wanted to make his home with the inspiring atmosphere of the new College and energy of the young teachers and president. He built a home, where he continued to live for fifty-four years. In 1900 he married Augusta Alfrida Leksell, a gifted pianist. They had one daughter, Margaret Elizabeth.
With time Sandzen became more and more involved in teaching, even his evenings were reserved for class time. At around nine or ten in the evening he would find time for his own drawing. Sandzen’s inspiration came from his summers spent in Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico.
Sandzen spent his time trying to generate an interest in art by talking to people about art, organizing exhibitions and establishing art clubs. He donated artwork to the local art club to help raise money for the purchasing of art books for the library, the financing of exhibitions, and the occasional awarding of a scholarship.
The Babcock Galleries in New York hosted two large exhibitions of Sandzen’s work in 1922 and 1923. His sponsors, the American-Scandinavian Foundation, enthusiastically invited him to come. Sandzen’s reply was that he had classes and could not leave.
Sandzen retired after fifty-two years of teaching at Bethany College. Sandzen had honorary doctorates bestowed upon him by Midland College of Fremont, Nebraska by Nebraska University, and by Kansas State College. In 1940 he was made a Knight if the Swedish Order of the North Star.
After many months of failing health, Birger Sandzen passed away quietly in his home on June 19, 1954.
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Biography from David Cook Galleries:
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Sven Birger Sandzén
Born Sweden, 1871
Died Kansas, 1954
Birger Sandzén was encouraged from an early age to pursue his interest in art. At the age of eight, he was given his first watercolor box and received drawing lessons in his home in Blidsberg, Sweden. Sandzén’s formal education began at the Skara School in Skara, Sweden at the age of ten. At Skara, Sandzén studied with Olaf Erlandsson who introduced the young artist to oil painting.
After graduation from Skara in 1890, Sandzén studied for a semester at Lund University in Lund, Sweden. The following year the young artist went to Stockholm with the intention of studying at the Royal Academy. Sandzén was disappointed to find that there were no vacancies at the Academy and a long list of applicants. However, he learned of a class being formed by one of Sweden’s greatest painters and etchers, Anders Zorn. Sandzén studied with Zorn, Richard Bergh, and Per Hasselberg in what was later to become the Artists League.
Early in 1894, Sandzén was accepted into a painting class taught by Aman-Jean in a studio the artist shared in Paris with Georges Seurat. Aman-Jean promoted Impressionism and introduced Sandzén to Pointillism. Birger used a Pointillist, or Tonalist, approach to painting in his work until around 1910.
Sandzén learned about an opening on the faculty of Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas from a classmate in Paris and immediately wrote a letter requesting the position. He was hired by the college and relocated to Kansas in the fall of 1894. In addition to assisting in the Art Department, Sandzén began his first year instructing in German, French, and Swedish. In 1899 he was appointed principal art teacher and head of the Art Department. Sandzén held both positions until his retirement in 1946, after which time he was professor emeritus.
Sandzén first visited the Rocky Mountains of Colorado in 1908 and began painting in the Colorado Springs area around 1916. The artist made his first trip to New Mexico in 1918 and was a frequent visitor to Santa Fe and Taos in the years that followed. He was elected an associate member of the Taos Society of Artists in 1922. Sandzén spent the summers of 1923-24 teaching at the Broadmoor Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado (presently the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center). Birger also taught at Chappell House (the forerunner to the Denver Art Museum), Utah State Agricultural College, Stephens
College, the University of Michigan, and the Kansas City Art Institute. Though he traveled often, Sandzén continued to live in Lindsborg until his death in 1954.
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Biography from Douglas Frazer Fine Art, Ltd.:
| The son of a Lutheran minister, Sven Birger Sandzen 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.
Sandzen graduated from the College of Skara in Sweden in 1890, then
studied at the University of Lund. He first studied art at the
Stockholm Artists League School with Anders Zorn, Richard Bergh, and an
artist named Erlandsson, then later in Paris with Aman-Jean. In
1894 he moved to Kansas to teach at Bethany College. 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, Sandzen influenced many student artists throughout the Midwest,
many of whom became artists and artist/teachers, as well.
While respected as an educator, Sandzen 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 "created a bold Post-Impressionist style," which 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." He won a prize for his work at an exhibit of Kansas City
artists in 1917, and again in 1922 at WCC. Sandzen was also awarded the
Knight of the Swedish Royal Order of the North Star. During his
tenure as head of the art department at Bethany College, Sandzen wrote
With Brush & Pencil.
He died in his adopted home, Lindsborg, Kansas, in 1954.
Sources include: WWAA; Gerdts: Art Across America, vol 3; Samuels & Samuels: Encyclopedia of Artists of the American West.
Written by Sarah Nelson
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Biography from Altermann Galleries and Auctioneers, Santa Fe - II:
| Sven Birger Sandzen
Born: Bildsberg, Sweden 1871
Died: Lindsborg, Kansas 1954
Impressionist landscape painter of the Rockies, graphic artist, teacher
Son of a Lutheran minister, Birger Sandzen received all of his art educations in Europe. He was an 1890 graduate of the College of Skara in Sweden with further study at University of Lund. The pupil of A. Zorn and R. Bergh, he studied painting at the art school of Stockholm’s Artists’ League, then with Aman-Jean in Paris. He emigrated to Kansas in 1894, to teach aesthetics and painting at Bethany College, as professor until 1945 and thereafter as professor emeritus. He accumulated a collection of 500 of his own Western paintings and drawings.
He first painted in the Colorado Springs area about 1916, teaching at Broadmoor 1923-24. He also taught at Denver and at Utah State College. Sandzen was primarily a landscape painter specializing in Rocky Mountain scenes. His style was after Van Gogh, with masses of paint and impressionist palette. Sandzen was also a frequent visitor to Santa Fe and Taos, beginning 1918. In 1922 he exhibited with the Taos Society of Artists in New York City, alongside the New Mexico painting giants of the day.
Resource: SAMUELS’ Encyclopedia of ARTISTS of THE AMERICAN WEST,
Peggy and Harold Samuels, 1985, Castle Publishing
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Biography from Edenhurst Gallery (Artists M to Z):
| Birger Sandzen was born in Sweden in 1871. He emigrated to the United States at a very young age, settling in Lindsborg, Kansas. He remained there for the rest of his life, teaching at Bethany College. In the early years, he studied art in Paris and in the early teens was invited to be a Taos Founder. Though honored by this gesture, he chose to remain in Lindsborg, Kansas.
Sandzen's style of painting is unusual in its thick and heavy application of impasto in bold and bright color combinations, interpreting the landscape of the western United States. He is known for very colorful renderings of mountain lakes with boulders, cypress and aspen trees and moonrises along waterways. He died in Kansas in 1954, forever refuting to be a follower of Vincent Van Gogh, though known to many as the "American Van Gogh". |
Biography from William A. Karges Fine Art - Beverly Hills:
| Birger Sandzen was born in Bildsberg, Sweden, in 1871, where he studied at the College of Skara
and the University of Lund. Following further study in Stockholm and Paris, Sandzen immigrated to
Kansas in 1894, accepting a post at Bethany College, with which he’d keep an association for the
rest of his life. Once in the U.S., Sandzen’s palette brightened considerably. He is best
remembered for his richly painted fauvist-inspired landscapes of the Smoky Mountains. |
Biography from AskART:
| Born in Bildsberg, Sweden, Sven Sandzen had a long distinguished career
as an art professor at Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas and as an
impressionist landscape painter. His work evolved from Pointillism to a
very personal style of bold color and with masses of paint, akin to
that of Vincent Van Gogh and Fauve painters Paul Cezanne and Henri
Matisse.
His early work was Tonalist in style in the manner of
Scandinavian Romanticism, but after he began taking trips to Colorado,
where he created many paintings of the Rocky Mountains, his work became
much more Expressionist and Fauve or brightly colored.
He was
the son of a Lutheran minister and received his art education in
Europe, graduating in 1890 from the College of Skara in Sweden and then
taking further study at the University of Lund. He was the pupil
of Anders Zorn and studied painting at the Artists' League of Stockholm
and then with Aman-Jean in Paris.
In 1894, he emigrated to
Kansas where until 1945 he was professor at Bethany College and from
then until his death, professor emeritus. Not only did he paint
in the West including Yellowstone National Park in 1930, he amassed a
personal collection of over 500 western paintings and drawings.
At
Bethany College, he organized the first exhibition of Swedish-American
art held at that Swedish institution. The exhibit included
paintings by himself and his colleagues. He was also active in
the Swedish-American Society in Chicago.
In 1916, he first went
to Colorado and in the mid 1920s, taught some classes at the Broadmore
Hotel. He also taught at Denver College and at Utah State
College. From 1918, he became a regular visitor to Santa Fe and Taos,
New Mexico, and in 1922, exhibited with the Taos Society of Artists in
New York.
During the Depression, he was a W.P.A. artist and was the author of a book titled With Brush and Pencil.
"He was also a founding member of the Prairie Printmakers Society. In
the 1930s, a handful of intaglio and block print artists from Wichita,
Lawrence and El Dorado, Kansas met with Sandzen in his studio and under
his direction created one of America's most successful print
societies". (McCraw)
Sources include:
Peggy and Harold Samuels, Encyclopedia of Artists of the American West
Fred McCraw, Art Writer of Kansas City and Researcher |
| ** If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at registrar@AskART.com. |
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