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Birger Sandzén (American, 1871-1954). In Logan Canyon, Utah, 1930. Oil on board. 13-7/8 x 12 inches (35.2 x 30.5 cm). Si...
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Description
Birger Sandzén (American, 1871-1954)In Logan Canyon, Utah, 1930
Oil on board
13-7/8 x 12 inches (35.2 x 30.5 cm)
Signed lower right: Birger Sandzén
Signed, dated, and inscribed on the reverse: In Logan Canyon / Logan, Utah / 1930 / Birger Sandzén, / Lindsborg, Kans.
PROVENANCE:
Ruth and Morton Hill;
N.M. Ruthrauff, La Canada, California;
Ted Prescott, Plymouth Village, California;
Mr. and Mrs. Charles I. Emlich, Redlands, California, acquired from the above, 1974;
Private collection, Salt Lake City, Utah.
An associate member of the Taos Society of Artists, Birger Sandzén was a Swedish-born artist famous for his vibrant landscape paintings of the American southwest. The son of a minister, Sandzén displayed an early artistic talent, which was encouraged and cultivated by his parents. His formal artistic training was completed in Europe, and in 1894 he emigrated to America, where he had accepted a teaching position at Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas. For more than 52 years, Sandzén was a professor of art history, drawing, and painting in the small Kansas town of Lindsborg. He was a staunch advocate of the arts and worked within his community to organize art clubs, exhibitions, and lectures. Throughout his career, however, Sandzén's own painting was relegated to late night sessions until 1945, when he retired from teaching in order to devote himself to painting full time.
Sandzén's early artistic style was heavily influenced by Tonalism and Scandinavian Romanticism, but once he began spending his summers in the American southwest, his palette exploded with color. He began visiting Taos in the summer of 1918 at the height of the artist colony. Four years later Sandzén was elected an associate member of the Taos Society of Artists. That same year, 1922, he exhibited with the group in New York, where he also had a one-man exhibition at the Babcock Gallery.
In 1920, an art critic from the Washington Star offered the following commentary on Birger Sandzén's work: "The colors used are rather vivid but they are superb and the work has the bigness of the country represented...Furthermore, the colors, while vivid, are perfectly attuned and their values are nicely related. The effects, while startling, are intensely significant and the illusion of light and atmosphere is admirably set forth.
"The kind of simplification that one finds in these canvases is what the modernists have apparently sought but have, to the present time, secured only clumsily. It is the simplification of nature with a broad vision. It is founded on tradition and it has the basic qualities common with all great art...It is modern. It is contemporary. It is essentially American. It breathes the spirit of the West and it opens new vision. Here is a painter who is worth remembering and whose experimentation must be regarded with utmost respect" (as quoted in E. Lindquist, Birger Sandzén: An Illustrated Biography, Lawrence, Kansas, 1993, p. 81).
With its thick, textural impasto style and strong, colorful brushwork reminiscent of Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Cézanne, In Logan Canyon, Utah embodies the accolades showered upon Sandzén, and is as relevant and impressive today as it was when painted in 1930.
More information about Birger Sandzén, also known as Sandzén, Birger, Sandzen, Birger, Sandzén, Sven Birger, Sandzen, Sven Birger, Sven Birger Sandzen, Birger Sandzén.
Framed Dimensions 21.5 X 19.5 Inches
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