Sven Birger Sandzen was born  Feb. 5, 1871, in Blidsberg, Sweden, to Johan Peter Sandzen and Clara Elizabeth.

He was an educator and crusader for art and a great painter, illustrator, engraver, woodcut print maker and lithographer as well.

Sandzen’s art started out as a "tonal landscapist," evolving into a “pointilist” (ca. 1910), and by 1915,

his work was compared to Van Gogh and Paul Cezanne:

with masses of paint and brightly colored, impressionist palette (Fauve).

He was the son of a Lutheran minister.

He showed artistic ability as early as eight years old, when he got his first watercolors and began drawings lessons.

Birger Sandzen knew he wanted to be an artist from the age of 10.

In 1881 he began studying at the College and Academy of Skara.

 While there, he studied with Olof Erlandson, a graduate of the Royal Academy in Stockholm.

He graduated from Skara in 1890, then went to study at the University of Lund.

After Lund University, he attended technical high school at Stockholm, studying perspective and form drawing.

In 1894 he gained admission into a class in Paris taught by Aman-Jean, who also shared a studio with Georges Seurat.

From Aman-Jean he learned Impressionism and Pointillism, which is seen in his work to about 1910.

In 1894, he moved to Lindsborg Kansas, and his palette began to brighten considerably.

He began a lifetime of teaching at Bethany College, becoming first a professor (until his retirement in 1946),

then professor emeritus until his passing.

At Bethany College in Lindsborg Ks, he served as head of the Art Department,

and began his first year teaching in German, French, and Swedish language studies.

He spoke six languages, including Latin.

He felt inspired to build his home, where he resided for fifty-four years.

In 1900 he wed Augusta Alfrida Leksell, a gifted pianist. They were gifted with one daughter, Margaret Elizabeth.

He first saw Colorado in 1908, and began painting  in the Colorado Springs area about 1916.

Then he found Taos, becoming a frequent visitor to Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico beginning in 1918.

He taught classes at the Broadmore Hotel and Denver College in the mid 1920s.

His work won at an exhibit of Kansas City artists in 1917, and again at WCC in 1922.

In 1922 and 1923 The Babcock Galleries in New York showed two large exhibitions of Sandzen's paintings.

He was honored as an associate member of The Taos Society of Artists in 1922 and exhibited with the Taos Society of Artists in New York.

In he summers of 1923-24 Sandzén taught at the Broadmoor Academy in Colorado Springs,

Colorado (presently the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center) and in the mid 1920s, he taught at the Broadmore Hotel.

Through out his life, he taught at Chappell House (the forerunner to the Denver Art Museum),

Utah State Agricultural College (now Utah State University), Stephens College, Denver College,

the University of Michigan,  188 Kansas City Art Institute, and Brigham Young University.

In the 1930s he founded the Prairie Printmakers Society.

He helped begin the Mid-West Art Exhibition held yearly in Lindsborg and the Smoky Hill Art Club.

He also helped to organize the Prairie Water Color Painters.

During the Depression, he served as a W.P.A. artist,

painting murals for the Halstead Post Office, “Where Kit Carson Camped”, in 1941,

for the Lindsborg Post Office, “Smoky River”, in 1938,

and for the Belleville Post Office, “Kansas Stream”, in 1939.

In 1940 he was honored as a Knight of the Swedish Order of the North Star.

In 1954 at age 83, Birger Sandzen died  in Lindsborg, Kansas.

Sven Birger Sandzen said Nature was the “great teacher”.

Sandzen said, "It is neither possible nor necessary to describe the great romantic wonderland of the Southwest,

its rugged, primitive grandeur, its picturesque people, its scintillating light and mystic color.

The spell of this fairyland is quite irresistible.

Once under its magic influence, the artist will hardly be able to break away, even if he cared to do so."

And Sandzen himself was called,  the "American Van Gogh".

He said "my gift to America is to make one realize how beautiful the simplest landscape is

and how alive, vigorous and changing our trees and rocks are.

The gift of understanding beauty is the greatest anyone can make to another human being."

"Painting was my greatest ambition - not just to paint pictures to sell, but to understand the country about me and about its formation.

When this was understood, I could paint an American landscape and show how beautiful it was to those who had not yet realized how lovely America is."

Paris art critic, Guiseppe Pelletieri, wrote "This dreamer-painter is truly a master."

Sandzen said, “I feel that one should be guided in both composition and use of color by the character of the landscape...

 One should  . . .  first of all, emphasize the rhythm and then sum up the color impression in a few large strokes.

 In other words: A severe decorative treatment is best adapted for this purpose."

“However, it should not be understood that color is less significant. No, not at all.

 The color arrangement, however simple it may be, should support and enforce the lines.

 A false arrangement of color may completely destroy the rhythm...

One must then use pure colors which refract each other, but which through distance assimilate for the eye -

the so-called ‘optical’ blending - since the usual blending on the palette, the ‘pigmented blending,’

is not intensive enough and does not ‘vibrate.'”

Denver Art Museum

“Abandoned Mill"

“Castle by the Sea”

 “Corner of Nevadaville”

“Granite Banks”

“In the Grand Canyon”

"Kansas Creek"

"Pond with Cottonwood Trees"

“Road in the Wilderness”

"Sunflowers"

Birger Sandzen Museum Collections Include:

(Click on links below to view art works)

Art Museum of Gothenburg

Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris

Birger Sandzen Memorial Gallery

British Museum, London

Bone Creek Museum of Agrarian Art

Brooklyn Museum of Art

Chicago Art Institute

Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center

Dallas Museum of Art

Denver Art Museum

Figge Art Museum/Davenport Art Museum

Goteborg Art Gallery

Hutchinson Art Center

Jonson Gallery of University of New Mexico

Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art

Library of Congress, Washington, DC

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Lund Museum

Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art

Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Missouri-Columbia

Museum of Art at Brigham Young University

Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm

Museum of Nebraska Art

Museum of The Southwest

National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

New Mexico Museum of Art

New York Public Library

Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Santa Fe Art Museum

Sheldon Museum of Art

Spencer Museum of Art

Springville Museum of Art

Sweden, National Museum, Stockholm

The American Swedish Institute

The Brooklyn Museum of Art

The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art

The John H. Vanderpoel Art Association

The Mennello Museum Of American Art

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Ulrich Museum of Art

American Museum of Western Art - The Anschutz Collection

New York Water Color Club

California Water Color Society

Prairie Print Makers Society

Chicago Society of Etchers

Midland College in Nebraska

University of Nebraska in Lincoln

Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas