Moonrise in the Foothills

Sven Birger Sandzen

Middle American printmaker Birger Sandzen created this night landscape with a full moon using a lithograph crayon to create an image that somewhat mimics his woodcuts. He uses a series of short black lines to form the trees and longer, looser lines for the sky. The full moon is blank, allowing the paper to show through as white. Sandzen used a large nail like a punch to create black and white woodcuts with a similar aesthetic.

Sandzen had studied with Anders Zorn in his native Sweden moving to Kansas in the US to teach in Lindsborg. His renderings of the Kansas landscape and the Rocky Mountains in block prints, lithographs, and paintings "created a bold Post-Impressionist style," 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 brought this energetic style to his printmaking as well.