Discover Carl Sprinchorn at Two Maine Museums This Fall

This fall, two Maine museums showcase the work of the underappreciated American modernist artist Carl Sprinchorn. The Ogunquit Museum of American Art (OMAA) and Bates College Museum of Art present Carl Sprinchorn: All the World is a Painting and Carl Sprinchorn: Points of View, respectively. Both exhibitions run through November 1 and December 19, respectively.

Born in Sweden and studying in New York, Sprinchorn (1887–1971) gained recognition through his friendships with notable artists such as Marsden Hartley, Charles Demuth, and Florine Stettheimer. His artistic career manifested in Maine, where he produced various works reflecting his diverse experiences as a Swedish immigrant, gay man, and modern painter concerned with regional, national, labor, and natural world issues.

The OMAA exhibition highlights Sprinchorn's ability to blend working-class subjects and leisure scenes with intimate portraits and energetic compositions of lumberjacks, hunters, dancers, and swimmers. His works reveal negotiations of identity within the shifting contexts of region, nation, labor, and the natural world. The exhibition features over seventy drawings, pastels, watercolors, and paintings.

Meanwhile, Bates College Museum of Art's exhibition Carl Sprinchorn: Points of View showcases Sprinchorn's evolving practice from the 1900s to the 1960s. It emphasizes his skill in capturing a moment's action and emotion through a variety of mediums, including drawings, pastels, watercolors, and paintings. Sprinchorn's early work in Monson during the 1910s and 20s included mysterious figures and moody landscapes, while his later Maine works focused on rural life, portraits of male figures, and sketches of hunting and logging scenes.