Travel News & Feature Stories

Palm Springs Art Museum - Colors of the West: The Paintings of Birger Sandzen
Palm Springs Bureau of Tourism, Palm Springs, California

Sven Birger Sandzén (1871-1954), a Swedish-born artist, trained in Paris and participated in its famous fin de siècle milieu. In 1894 he immigrated to the United States and settled in the center of the American prairie in Lindsborg, Kansas where he was invited to become an art professor at Bethany College. Considered a post-Impressionist for his use of color and expressionist in technique, Sandzén vibrant and dynamic paintings of prairie and western landscapes from Kansas to the California coast have been relatively unknown outside the Midwest until recently.

Birger Sandzén, Twilight, Stevenson’s Lake, 1943, oil on canvas, Greenough Trust
Collection, Birger Sandzén, Memorial Gallery, Lindsborg, Kansas

Birger Sandzén, 1930, in the Art Pavilion, Bethany College, painting Horses in Wyoming. Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery.